Wire runs in the wing

I am getting close to closing my left wing and am thinking I need another conduit run for strobe wiring. I have a 5/8 conduit but read in a previous post that you shouldn't run high voltage wires with other wires. I am planning on running a coax for an antenna in the wing tip and need advice. Normally will I have only one antenna in one wing or will I need an antenna in both wings. I can easily drill more wiring holes in the ribs in the right wing as I haven't started assembling it yet. I hate to drill more holes in the left wing ribs since it is primed and ready for the bottom skin. This will be a night VFR plane with landing lights in the tips.

Jim Wright wings RV-9A 90919 Arkansas

Conduits in the wings

Jim,

At this point you have NO skins on the bottom of the wing, correct? I drilled my conduit holes before I started ANY assembly at all. You can still add those holes for now, although it will be tough in the wing walk area since those five ribs are so close to each other. You can see my wings in that condition on my web page at this URL:

http://www.n2prise.org/rv9a013.htm

I put two conduits in each wing. In the left wing, the strobe runs through one conduit, the other has the wing leveler servo wires in it, and the landing light wire, and marker light wire. The original hole in the ribs for the pitot tube is also in those ribs.

I bought a passive lift reserve indicator (LRI) and will be putting a 1/4" diameter tube in one conduit along with some small light wires. The other conduit gets the high-voltage strobe wire. Since the LRI needs TWO air tubes, I will use the pitot holes through the ribs in the right wings for the second LRI tube. I bought more of those black plastic inserts from Spruce to fill those holes and protect the LRI second tube.

I do have a Dynon unit, but elected to use a different LRI stall warning device that is independent of the Dynon. I like to have my eggs in different baskets. When you consider all the stuff I have in and ON my panel, I have three different methods of determining magnetic heading, two airspeeds, two vertical speeds, three alitimeters, etc.

Jerry K. Thorne
RV-9A N2PZ

Strobe cables

Jim,
I ran my strobe cables along the aft end of the wings using the aft wing rib tooling holes. Be careful around the aileron pushrod so you don't rub there. Once at the wing tips takes some careful planning to keep eveything seperated.

Good luck.

rv9aviator said:

I have a 5/8 conduit but read in a previous post that you shouldn't run high voltage wires with other wires.

Click to expand...

Could you give me the link to that post? I'd sure like to read about that.

Thanks,
Ron

I'm not sure which forum but you might do a search and find it. It didn't go into detail except that to say it was a very bad idea to run high voltage wires with low voltage wires because of radio and avionics interference.

Sorry I can't be of more help.
Jim

Conduit runs

What are people using for conduit in the wings? I saw a picture of a really nice job that someone did on their wings, but I can't find it now, and I'd like to see it again. If anyone knows what I'm talking about, please send me a link. It looked like they used some kind of rigid PVC - maybe 3/4". Is there any reason NOT to use PVC, or something like it, for running wires through the wing? I'm thinking that it would certainly be light enough, from a weight standpoint.

I don't have a picture, but look in Van's catalog and search "conduit"--it's about $7 for 25 ft and $12 for 50ft. It is not smooth buth black corrugated hose. this is what I've seen most used on pictures of other builders that I've seen.

Good luck

Steve

Conduit in the wings

Here is how I did it:

http://www.rv8.ch/article.php?story=20041026231058140

I know the PVC is pretty light, but there is no way that it is lighter than the conduit that Van's sells. The difference between Van's conduit and other conduit that you see in Fry's or auto parts stores is that Van's conduit is not split. I suspect that the split conduit would work fine, but I prefer Van's stuff because you can install the wires anytime. I see a lot of guys leave a string in their tubes so they can pull the wires through later, but you really don't have to do this. All you need to do is tie a string to a small wad of paper and use the vacuum to suck the line through the conduit (or PVC). I tried it, and it works great. With the split conduit, you might not get enough vacuum to pull the string.

My advice is to buy Van's conduit, it's pretty cheap and light.

Here is how I did it using Van's conduit

The conduit was glued in place with pro-seal.

The pink string will stay in place in case I ever install a heated pitot tube. (but that's another topic.)