Tuesday 2 ~ Friday 5
No building
Saturday 6 ~ Sunday 7
Mostly wiring and more wiring. I am going through the process of putting labels on every wire, just in case I have to figure it all out again one day. I have purchased a Brother 1900 labeling machine which does a nice job of printing on 1/4" clear black tape. I then put a little bit of clear heat shrink over it to make sure it doesn't come off.
One thing I have discovered is that despite my best efforts at re working the air box manifold its just not going to work, so I carved a new one out of blue foam and made covered it with 3 layers of bid. It looks like this one is going to fit, but things are very tight behind the panel. The darn thing is just not deep enough.
Monday 8
I put in some heat reflective material on the firewall. The first piece was the hardest, after that it went on pretty easy. I ended up using 4 sheets of the stuff to get the coverage. It looks pretty good, I hope it holds up under service conditions
Tuesday 9
I took some time out to give some though to my electrical system. I like a lot of the ideas that Bob Nuckoll's of Aeroelectric recommends. I'd like to put in a separate E-buss, but as always, space is a real problem in the Europa. Fitting in a second fuse block at this stage of the project will prove to be very tricky, so I think I am going to have to go down the circuit breaker route for the second buss. I sketched out a few idea and it looks like I am going to need about 10 of them (at nearly $20 per shot it adds up!) I came up with a list and ordered them on line.
In order to preserve power I am going to use a low current hold in contactor.
The hold in current of these devices come in at around 130 ma which is a good
deal less that the 1 plus amp for the conventional contactors. Take a look
at http://www.ciitech.com/doc_generator.asp?doc_id=1280
if your interested. They are not cheap though.
Wednesday 10
No building
Thursday 11
My circuit breakers turned up today so I mounted them up on a small sub panel. Its an area that would normally be wasted space so I think it will work out okay.
Friday 12
Finished off making the brass buss bars for the circuit breaker panel.
Saturday 13 ~ Sunday 14
Ran in all of the power cables for the radio stack and terminated them with plugs. I have decided to make my radio and instrument stacks up as removable modules and essentially have instrument console as a fixture.
I am quite unhappy with the instrument console that Europa provide and now wish I had either purchased one of the full width custom panels available from Flight Crafters or make my own like Bob Jacobson did. Bob's was larger than the factory panel and still came in at 2 pounds less. I suspect if carbon fiber was used it would be even lighter.
The problem is not really with the amount of available panel space, but rather with the internal volume. It is not deep enough by about 20 ~ 30 mm, and routing cables and air ducting is very difficult. The parcel tray is a cute, but worthless idea and I have covered mine by Velcro so I will be able to at least put things there and have them stay in place.
Monday 15
The battery isolator contactor arrived in the post today so I set about installing it. This device was designed for battery-powered vehicles, it can switch 200A DC indefinitely, and has a solenoid power-management circuit, which drops the hold current of the relay actuator to 130mA - an 8:1 reduction from a conventional contactor relay at about 1 amp. The down side is that the darn expensive, $90.00 versus a conventional contactor costing $15.00.
I am going to a lot of trouble to conserve power and I am hoping that along with this power reduction and LED position and nav lights that the anemic permanent magnet alternator will cope with night flights
Tuesday 16
No building
Wednesday 17
The last circuit breaker turned up from AC Spruce so I wired it up and installed it in its final resting place. I used a Brother lable machine with black on clear lettering and it looks pretty good so I will use that for all of the panel lettering.
Thursday 18
I wired up the battery isolator contactor along with the the E-Buss feed and connected it to a battery and was rewarded with a healthy "thud": instead of smoke and flames.
Friday 19
After a lot of deliberation I decided to use the OVP protection device as described in Aeroelectric connection. Its not really going to protect the avionics in the case of a sudden over voltage, as the mechanical delays of the relay and circuit breaker are way too slow, how ever it will prevent the battery from getting a long term cooking. I may install a separate OVP device in the E-Buss to protect the avionics at a latter time.
I made up a tray for the regulator, OVP relay capacitor and fuse block out of light gauge aluminum and wired up as per the circuit diagram, however it seems like some thing that would be easy to get wrong so I am going to get a second pair of eyes to look it over. There are a lot of short runs with 12 gauge wire which is not very easy to work with.
You might notice the cartridge fuse assembly I am using for the 30 slow blow back to the battery and 20 amp to the main buss. I had a lot of trouble locating the fuse holder, but I was able to find a 3 phase unit that I cut off one fuse holder. I got it from an electrical hardware supplier. The part number is BM6033SQ. I suspect if you do a search on the internet you can find several mail order suppliers.
Saturday 20
Sunday 21
Monday 22
Tuesday 23
I asked a friend of mine from the EAA chapter to come by and review the OVP & Essential buss circuit I am using and check to see it I have wired up my alternator as planned. Well the good new was he agreed with the circuit as designed and I had wired it up correctly, however he had had bad experiences with the fuse blocks I installed and recommended me to use fusible links. I will try and get some fiberglass sleeveing and see if I can construct some.
Wednesday 24
I got brave and tested out a few of the simple circuits one by one. I managed to check out the panel lights, strobe, navigation lights, fuel pumps and the essential buss with out generating smoke and flames.
I did discover that I will need to put in a switching circuit for my trim up / down control which I hadn't planned for. I can decide if to do it with transistors in a bridge circuit, or a pair of relays. The transistors I have, the relays I don't, however I trust relays more than transistors when it comes to inductive loads.
Thursday 25
I was one of those days where it was a good plan not to do anything in the workshop, however I did manage to go flying in the Comanche which was nice.
Friday 26
Well I was feeling really brave today and tried cranking the engine. I pulled the top set of plugs and had my son watch to see if the spark and noting else catches alight. Sure enough things cranked over as they should.
Saturday ~ Wednesday 31
I got a pretty good run at the wiring any pretty well wrapped up the major portions of the wiring. I was able to put the avionics stack in and fire up the transponder and radio along with the intercom. I live near enough to the airport to be able to pick up there transmissions while my aircraft is inside the house.
I have a few items to debug, the warning light for the EIS doesn't flash and the although the TCU cycles the servo the two warning lights don't flash at power up as the manual suggest they should. I still have my fuel gauge to construct and a few items to terminate, however as much as I have enjoyed the exercise its time for a break to work on something different.
If you have an interest in the Tony's fuel gauge the circuit is on www.kaon.co.nz/europa/fuelgaugev3.pdf.
Its quite a clever idea, he uses a pressure transducer to measure the weight of
fuel in the tank. A microprocessor compensates for the shape of the tank
and sends a serial output to a display board on the aircraft panel.