CHAPTER 6
To read another Chapter click hereunder:
| Saturday, August 19th, 2006 | Preliminary interior design (upholstery) |
| Family meeting concerning the interior look. We decided to choose for the upholstery, Classic Aero Designs. They have some offers which are quite interesting for the moment. The Are you looking for a no hassle interior solution that produces professional results and comes at a price that is a great value? That was our goal when we designed our Sportsman interior package. Classic Aero Design advertises on the internet with the following text: " So, we decided to go for this package except the side panel set. We mailed Luke and asked him the Sportsman Package but without the standard included 12-piece side panel set but with the Aviators side panels. He gave a fair quot for this and that's our deal... 2 seat cushion sets (left and right) Concerning the to-be-used colors we choosed leather in two colors. Light Gray and Ash. Of course, the skypassion gray has to be included into the final design. So, for you, some pictures what the final interior will look like... Hereunder first the complete Sportsman Package...
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| But with the side panel "Aviators Side Panels" | |
| The separate pieces of the Aviator's side panel | |
| The design for the seats... | |
| ... the stick boot assembly... | |
| ... the carpets, | |
| and their quality... | |
| The light gray color | |
| and the Ash gray... | |
| This is just to have an impression. Of course these colours on internet are absolutely not representative but, you know, this is a first impression...
Luke will send me some samples... And then... 14 weeks are needed before shipping this. It looks like a project itself... I'm really looking forward to see this in place... |
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Well, I'm more than 14 weeks further. The upholstery is on it's way. Within a couple of days it will be here. And, today Sunday the 2nd of December, Dimitri is printing the panel. So, next week a lot to see... |
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| Saturday, December 1st, 2006 | Starting the wiring of the electric system |
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In the meantime, last week I received my firewall forward kit, I ordered the engine (which I'm going to build in England the third week of January and some missing small parts came in... A lot in one week... So, I start with the wiring now. I was really surprised to see the quality of this FF kit. All wires finished so far. I can start now to install some parts of the firewall forward section now it's still open on top of the front section of the fuselage. This will enhance the way of working. |
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| This is how this spagetti of wires came in... | |
| And this is what we did last week. Now connect these bundles... | |
| Before connecting I started with Ronny to install some firewall forward parts. The battery box was made... | |
| ...and installed in place... | |
| Then we made and installed the reinforcement plate neccessary to install the two relays on the firewall. | |
| Here you see the inside of the firewall where the reinforcement plate was placed. | |
| And then the masterrelay and the start relay | |
| Inbetween the two copper bars connecting the two relays. | |
| Time spent with Ronny | 13 hours... |
| Saturday, December 2nd, 2006 | Wiring cnt'd |
| I followed the instructions that came with the firewall forward kit. But, instead of making the terminal bus and the ground connections, I started from these blocks I bought some months ago.
To make a ground bus, I connected all connections with a copper bar. |
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| I cut half the separations away so I got clearance for the copper strip. Here uou see the result. | |
| I mounted the terminal bus and the ground bus on the sub panel rib as shown on the picture. | |
| A better close-up of the ground bus... | |
| ... and the terminal bus. | |
| And then the complete spagetti of the harness step after step connected so far. Here some connections to the terminal bus, | |
| ... and the connections to the ground bus. | |
| The wires you see in the centre are these provided for the flap motor and the lights in the right wing. Later hereunder you can see the way they go through the fuselage. | |
| This bundle of wires contain some connections to the switches and the left wing wiring for the lights. | |
| The wires going to the right wing and those for the flaps and the firewall forward parts. The wires going straight down are these coming out the firewall as shown in the picture hereunder. | |
| Here they are coming out the firewall. One of these is for the voltage regulator. | |
| These are the three wires going from the ignition switch to the relays. | |
| Here a better view of the way they divert to different directions. | |
| And last but not least the way the wires come through the bulkhead to the place tehy will be connected to the Amphenol connector for the wing wiring. | |
| Time spent with Ronny | 13 hours... |
| Saturday, December 8th, 2006 | Wiring cnt'd |
| I finished the battery Box first. I drilled the large holes and deburred them. This thing is ready to be painted... | |
| Since I first would like to finish the aft section with the wiring, I decided fo first install the dome light for the bagage compartiment. For the bagage light I bought this Whelen dome light from Spruce. This is really a nice part of thechnology. Led-technology. Here you see the backside, | |
| ... and this is how it looks from the front side. | |
| I mounted this on the upper bagage cover plate. | |
| This is the cabin side view of the light. | |
| And, then, once mounted I started to wire this thing as you can see here. | |
| In the meantime I finished the wiring section from the altitude hold servo. All these wires go together to the panel. | |
| And then, I shortened the sticks and installed the two stick grips. | |
| As you see, I did choose the Infinity stick grips. Again, I'm impressed by the way these beauties are made. | |
| Here you can see them both mounted in place...
Next week I can show you the printed panel. It seems quite difficult to print and that's why they were not ready today. I'm looking forward. Also to see the Classic Aero Design upholstery which seems to be in Brussels already. But Bax Global did not bring them yet. So, this is for the coming week... |
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| Time spent | 8 hours... |
| Saturday, December 15th, 2006 | Assembling final panel |
| The panel is screen printed at least. Today I installed all instruments in it together with Ronny. Here you see an overview of the left panel section. | |
| Some close-up pictures. Here the Trio Avionics autopilot and altitude hold. | |
| The timer/clock/G-Meter from Van's and the speed indicator mounted. | |
| The altitude indicator, the Garmin CDI and the trim/flap indicators. | |
| The two Dynon screens, and above the programm switch and manual override for the flap positioning system. | |
| Here the right panel section with the AvMap EKP IV, some normal breakers and thereunder the DC Load center. | |
| Here uou see the DC Load center and its extension above it which indicates tripped breakers with LED's. | |
| A closer view to the normal breakers. | |
| And just to show how it fits in the backside.
I'm prettey proud on this result. The panel looks really professional. Tomorrow the Classic Aero Design uoholstery will come in and next week I will have my rocker switches from Otto ENgineering... |
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| Time spent | 15 hours... |
| Saturday, December 23rd, 2006 | Assembling final panel and impression interior |
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I worked the whole morning to install the panels on the panel frame. And then I installed it temporarily in place. |
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| And these pictures show the first impression of the interior of the RV. | |
| Front view of the panel... | |
| One seat with the stick and you can see a part of the side panel upholstery | |
| The two seats.... | |
| and a view from the back to the front... | |
| Well, this is really enjoying, you know... But, back to business. We decided to install the aileron trim first. All seats and panels back in their boxes and start again to this... | |
| It took several hours to install this thing but, neverthesless I'm happy that it's installed. | |
| Time spent | 17 hours... |
| Tuesday-Wednesday, December 27 and 28th, 2006 |
Electricity wires ... |
| On Tuesday I finished the connectors and wires for the altitude hold. It took me several hours to solder all the pins on these connectors. So, first thing on Wednesday was the installation of the Altitude Hold in place. Here you can see the main electronics of the instrument. On the other side, which is not on the picture, the other two connectors and the wires going to the servo in the fuselage. | |
| As you can see I installed another terminal block to receive all the different wires coming from the entire fuselage. In the right upper corner I drilled a hole to route the wires to the backside of the panel. I can not guide them via the bottom because I would obstruct the avionics cradle for possible removement. So, I decided to guide them via the upper section for all the wires going to the right side of the fuselage and wing. | |
| Here you see the routing from the backside. This gives me more possibilities to unmount the avionics cradles if necessary. On the left bottom corner the wire conduit receives all wires to go to the right wing root. | |
| Here the way down of the wire conduit. On top you can see the external power receptacle. Behind it, the wire conduit goes through the subpanel to the backside... | |
| Via the holes along the center section the bundled wires come in the floor section of the seats. From there they continue to the right and the lect wingroot position... | |
| .... as you can see here for the right wing...
Tomorrow we continue wiring... |
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| Time spent on two days... | 13 hours |
| Thursday, December 30th, 2006 | Electricity wires ... |
| We continued the wiring coming out the centersection. The wiring conduit you see is coming from the backside of the fuselage. It contains the wires for the tail strobe light, the tail nav light, the wiree meant for disabling strobe light in the tail, the wires for the bagae light, the wires for the altitude hold servo. All these are in place where they are needed. | |
| On the right side the strobe box completely wired. In the left top corner you can see a 22 gage cable going up to the connection point for a flood light on the top of the bagage area. I think this can be helpful to find something back in flight when it's darker. Well, I hope to use this aircraft for night VFR once. So... | |
| On the right side the wired altitude hold and going to the right top corner a small wire for the bagage light.
So, tomorrow I will continue wiring from the panel to the centersection for those items remaining. I don't have the rocker switches yet but they will hopely arrive the first week of January... |
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| Time spent with Ronny... | 15 hours |
| Thursday, December 30th, 2006 | Electricity wires ... |
| First of all I continued wiring from the subpanel to the wingroot connector points. I still had to place cables for the fuel senders, the fuel guardian, the pitot heater and the stall warner. I finished these around noon... | |
| Ronny joined me in the afternoon. In the morning I received visit from Johan Teerlinck, a pilot from the neighbourhood and very enthusiastic fan of the Van's aircraft collection. After his visit I proceeded with the project by trying out where the FPS and the accompanying relays will be installed. This is quite important for the wires needed to feed this beautiful instrument. As you can see on the picture, all necessary wires are installed to proceed one of the following weeks together with Gerry to install these parts... | |
| Here a view on the place where I installed the two 12 Volt invertors for the glare shields I plan to install in the panel. I bought these from affordable panels and a more detailed description is readable by clicking here... The glareshields arestrips that will be attached under the main panel to illuminate the subpanel. The blue wires are the connections between the EXP bus and the terminal block for all the avionics power. | |
| Here you can see the frontside where the EXP BUS is installed. You se | |
| And this is the terminal block where they are attached to. The other side of the T-block will attach to the avionics power. The EXP Bus surges all the avionics and switches automatically off to prevent them of overvoltage when starting... | |
| So far so good... All wires in place starting from the panel to the cabin and more behind. This is already a big step forward... As you can see this becomes a real Italian spagetti of wires. But OK, we have everything under control so far... | |
| Time spent with Ronny... | 17 hours |
| Saturday, January 7th, 2007 | Electricity wires ... |
| Wiring, wiring... I istalled another ground bus as you can see. It is necessary to provide the right side of the panel with perfect ground. And I installed another terminal bus specific for all interior lights. Left of the T-bus you see the dimmer. In other words, all interior lights will be connected to the terminal which connects with 4 channels to the dimmer... In the mean time, I received the pictures from the screenprinter to show the labelling printing of the panel. Go to Chapter 5 to see this... During the next week I continue wiring the backside of the panel. Pictures will follow... |
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| Time spent | 8 hours |
| Saturday, January 14th, 2007 | Electricity wires ... |
| Every evening this week I worked on the wiring of my panel. Today the switches arrived. Some pictures that give an impression of the work of this week... | |
| All wires that connect to the terminal bus 1 and 2 were routed over the bottom of the panel, | |
| while the wires for the DC load center go to the left side. You can see the clamps in which all wires run... | |
| and then, all switches in place and connected... | |
| and last but not least some front pictures for the switches and the way the (almost) complete panel will look. | |
| Tomorrow we leave for England to follow a Building class for my XP-360. We will build the engine at the location of Jade Air. Of course we will provide the site with a lot of pictures from this... | |
| Time spent with Ronny and Johan | 17 hours |
| Saturday, January 27th, 2007 | Tank mandatory note + Relay board |
| Ronny is not coming today (Weekend Ardens) but Johan joined me this morning and proposed to start working on the mandatory changes to be done on the flop tube in the fuel tanks. | |
| He figured out the best way to remove the inspection holes of the fuel tanks... | |
| ... and removed all the old sealant from it. Quite a job to do this in a perfect way, but he succeeded to remove both plates and cleaned them so they can be reused. | |
| Both tanks are ready to receive the flop tubes again. I ordered two new ones from Vans. So, just trying to find out the best wau to secure them with the safety wire. This is a job for the next session... | |
| In the meantime I started making three reinforcement plates to install all relays on it. This one is the relay board set to switch the landing lights on and off. The lower one is a kind of flipflop used to keep the master landing light on when pushed on the pushbutton of the stickgrips... | |
| These relays are necessary to switch the trims from the pilot and copilot grip stick. | |
| The landing light relay unit in place... | |
| ... and the relays for the copilot/pilot grips...
Next week I leave for a one week holiday to Portugal. I found an airfield in the Algarve. So I will try to make some nice flights above the Algarve coastline. And maybe, if it is possible I will fly to Gibraltar. So, I will be back in business in two weeks... Until then... |
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| Time spent with Johan | 14,5 hours |
| Saturday, February 10th, 2007 | Electricity |
| I had a wonderful stay in Portugal. Alvor, a small town near Portimao has a cosy airfield where I met some gentle people. one of them is Ken Tomsent. An Englishman who lives there and who rented me his C172 to make an unforgettable flight along the westside of the Algarve. And, I had a perfect experience with the RV-6 of Viv & Rich West. Their RV 6 flies perfect. Thanks again Viv for this wonderful flight over there...
So, back to busisness. i started building the last part of what has to come under the seats. The FPS. All these parts you see here are the cradles for relays and for the Flap Positioning System... Ready to connect... |
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| And then this relay which I need to switch some of the annunciators in the panel... Mounted on the sub panel... | |
| Johan came in in the afternoon. With a hell of a jetlag because he just returned from South-Africa. But, enthusiastic as always, he brought his laptop and a webcam with him to have a better view on the way he wants to safety wire the flop tube. And this worked perfect. He made some screenshots of the internal views the webcam showed. I will insert these later when he sends them... | |
| He positioned the webcam into the left wing tank to see what and how he would safety wire the assembly. Perfect idea because this technique prevented us to disassemble the AN elbow which was already perfectly sealed. This fifth eye helped enormously. I will show more details hereunder...
See mandatory note Vans |
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| The diameter of the starting wiring position was exactly the neck of a bottle of bear. So, by starting with this lasso, it was more convenient to twist the wire exactlly in position over the elbow AN-fitting where the floptube connects... | |
| Following pictures were made by taking a screenshot of the image the webcam sends to the laptop. It shows the way Johan fixed the modification that had to be made by the mandatory note from Vans. We used this method to prevent loosening the existing fitting because this was already sealed and tested to be perfectly closed. Here you can see the remaining fitting. The floptube is already separated from the fitting... | |
| After Johan made the lasso over the bottleneck he could position it over the fitting... | |
| ... and twisted it as required. | |
| Some more pictures of this phase you can see here. | |
| As clear in the previous picture he used enough spare wire to make it easier in the following steps to guide this through the drilled anchor hole in the floptube fitting. | |
| This is shown better in this shot. You can see the drilled anchor holes in the floptube fitting. | |
| Next, Johan guided the wire through this hole and afterwards he twisted the wire as required. Possibly the next time we will add a picture of the final result.
I'm happy this is already finished. To be done: the next tank and then we have to seal it to finish. And hen testing again... Thanks Johan, PERRRRFECT job... |
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| Gerry and Ronny started wiring the FFW master relay and starter relay. | |
| Just under the relays they installed the shunt for the Dynon EMS information. | |
| A closer view to the shunt... | |
| The third relay is one needed to switch the external power connector. This is the most lect relay on the picture... The 6 AWG cable going up is the one that connects straight to the connector... | |
| Here you see this cable coming out the firewall and running to the connector you see in the next picture. | |
| Here conected to the external back-up connector which I installed also inside the airplane. In the middle of the picture you can see a toggle switch upside down installed. This is a switch I need to disconnect the main power from the external power connector when I don't need this... It is accessible from beneath the panel. Just in case of a ran-out main battery... | |
| Time spent with Johan, Gerry and Ronny | 19 hours |
| Saturday, February 17th, 2007 | Riveting Front fuselage ribs |
| To continue with the wiring we decided first to start riveting the ribs of the front section. For this we had to unmount the enginemount and the main wheels. | |
| We had to be careful for the wires which were already fastened in this front section. | |
| Ronny was the bucker, I riveted. We had to be careful for the wires which were already fastened in this front section. | |
| Johan came and finished the second tank. Pictures of this are all included to prove the authorities we followed the mandatory note. But, I'm glad this is successfully finished. Next week we will seal the inspection panels back to the tank... |
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| Johan guided the upper wire through the drilled hole in the flop tube fitting. | |
| One safety wire end coming from the elbow fitting and the other end is going through the flop tube... | |
| Both were twisted using the special tool to do this. | |
| Remaining twisted wires cut away. | |
| Final thing to do was to turn the twisted part around the aseembly | |
| Final result as described in the mandatory note from Vans... | |
| Other tank to be done. All steps were repeated as described in the last two week updates of the site. | |
| Here to prove the execution of the mandatory note, the final result of the second fuel tank.
So, enough small and difficult to reach job. Johan assisted us further with the following described topics... One of these is that he also took some pictures in between. That's the reason why I'm also visible on the website this week. Rare pictures where you see me working isn't it? |
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| Sometimes it's hard to set these rivets perfect but, it's a perfect timing to do it this way. I waited for this until the complete design of the wiring was finished and I had a perfect view on all issues... | |
| Here the roll bar connection which has to be bolted later. But we had to put it temporarilly in place to rivet these parts. | |
| At the end of this day I put the panel frame in place. Do you see that spaghetti at the right? This is just a beginning... | |
| Here a better view of the complete section in place... Hereunder a view of a REAL SPAGHETTI... Some more parts and then the panel frame can remain in place. Once this is done we can rout the wires in place... |
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| Time spent with Johan, Gerry and Ronny | 19 hours |
| Saturday, February 24th, 2007 | Miscellaneous + cnt'd panel wiring |
| Johan started today with the installation of all floor centerplates platenuts... | |
| ... while I installed the left side parts of the panel. I had to finish this because in the afternoon I planned to start connecting the panel wires to their final locations. | |
| While I worked on the panel, Johan started to install all the cradles with relay boards and the FPS under the cabin floor. | |
| First two relays at the right side, | |
| ... the Flap Positioning System, | |
| and the right relay board... | |
| all these wires have to be connected. | |
| Ronny and I installed the relay as indicated which we need to switch the strobe lights and the switch which is necessary to switch off the wing strobes without the tail. This took a lot of time to figure out. We are still working on it... | |
| Time spent with Johan and Ronny | 20 hours |
| Sunday, February 25th, 2007 | Cnt'd panel wiring |
| Yesterday we stucked on this switch. The way the relay is working gave us some headaches. After a night(mare) Ronny figured out that the positive 12V of the LED disturbed the way the relay board switches. So, after some nightly sleepless hours he found out that the switching of the annunciator LEDs had to be done on the ground. And yessss... it works now perfectly. Here the "master switch" of the strobe which switches all strobe lights together. The two wing strobes and the tail strobe lights together... | |
| Switching on this switch makes blink these three LEDs on the annunciator panel. But, in certain situations the wing strobes can give a bad influence on a pilot (clouds reflect the stroboscopic effect which is not exactly what's preferred... That's why we installed the second switch which can disengage the wing strobes. On the panel we call this the "Tail Only"-switch. | |
| Here you can see the "Tail Only"-switch engaged. | |
| This switches off the wing strobes. The tail strobe remains on...
So far so good. End of the nightmare... (So far) |
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| An easy one. The switch for the NAV lights connected. When this switch is on... | |
| These three LEDs continuously fire on. This is a clear indication that these are ON... | |
| Just for fun...
The strobe lights on and the Nav lights on... |
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| I divided the landing lights in two. Here you see the switch for the right wing landing light on. This feeds the light straight to the right wing from the switch...
The left one will be feeded through a relay. Why? Well simple because I will switch the light on and off via the panel or via the piilot/co-pilot sticks. |
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| The right landing light switched on gives this indication on the annunciator panel... | |
| Time spent with Ronny | 13 hours |
| Sunday, March 3th, 2007 | Cnt'd panel wiring |
| Pitot heat switch connected, | |
| terminal block where the different accessories connect to the upper row. The lower row connects to the switches... | |
| then I connected the cooling fan which is meant to cool the backside of the avionics if necessary... | |
| in the afternoon Ronny came and we decided to start connecting the dimmer module and afterwards the different lights to it. Here the copilot's maplight is connected to the panel. The lights themself will be connected later in the side panel. | |
| The pilot's maplight connected and the instrument light switch. | |
| and last but not least, the cabin light, | |
| which you can see here for the bagage section.
I had to stop early today due to a familiy party we have to assist. So, the following will be for next week... |
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| Time spent with Ronny | 12 hours |
| Saturday, March 10th, 2007 | Cnt'd panel wiring and start canopy |
| Johan came today and together we started installing the roll bar. As explained in the notes we had to measure out the right position. After positioning we clamped the assembly to the rear canopy deck. | |
| And then we could drill the front and rear holes which have to be as close as possible to the longerons. | |
| Special attention is necessary for this to prvenet the longeron from damaging with the holes drilled. | |
| And this is the final hole in place. We did all four and made the spacers as described. | |
| While Johan went on withe the rollbar by installing some grips on it, I started with Ronny with riveting the aft canopy deck to the longerons. | |
| The left aft canopy deck was finished and then we decided to proceed with some wiring jobs. | |
| The panel frame attached in place... | |
| First thing we finished with the wiring job was the installation of the flood lights to the dimmer. As you see the switches in "On" position, and the green flood light over the sub panel lighting the switches. Perfectly when dimmed for possible future night VFR jobs... | |
| An unsharp picture but it gives a good impression of the way the light shines over the left and right subpanel. Another flood light will be installed on top of the main panel and in the bagage compartiment. Installing these lights took some time but the result is perfect... | |
| Last thing we did today was the test button for the low Oil Pressure indicator. Next week we will proceed with the
y deck. Once this is riveted, we can proceed with the canopy... |
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| Time spent with Ronny and Johan | 20 hours |
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