Starting to Wire - How to Route?
 

Just starting to wire her up (finally).

Wires from the engine compartment and panel itself are pretty well self defining as to routing, but from the tail and wings not quite so easy. So the question is how to get from here to there?

Obviously there are requirements, ease of access, short runs, hidden, protected etc.

How did some of you folks route the wires from the wings and tail up to the panel? Conduit, under the side panel covers, up the fire wall etc?

Thanks, Larry

conduit
 

Hi Larry,
We used the flexible conduit down the wings. We put everything in the conduit except for the strobe power supply which we ran down the gromets. We put the conduit up one hole in the wing rib to keep it away from the aileron push/pull tube. We drilled a small hole in each rib and place a tie wrap around the conduit. The final adjustment on the conduit is to place a large glob of goop at each rib junction and let it dry. Then we pulled the tie wraps snug against the goop and rib. We have not gotten to the fuselage yet, but we plan on using PVC there too. Here are some pictures.

Stuff here, stuff there, stuff everywhere

In the right wing conduit we have the Nav light, Marker bcn, Nav antenna, Angle of attack tubing, and auto pilot servo with the storbe power running seperately (the gray wire).

The way it looks inside the right wing

The left wing conduit has the Nav light, landing light, and heated pitot tubing and wiring.

Heated pitot runs in the left wing conduit

The right wing is stuffed so tight we cant get another wire in, the left wing is not so full.

Hi Larry:

Which model are you building? Wiring routing can vary greatly from model to model.

OOP's, I should have said it's a 7A.
Larry

Claude,
I see you went with the Gretz heated pitot w/ chrome base - so did I. Are you planning on painting this, or chroming it? When I got mine I realized it was some composite material, and wondered if it could be chromed.

Thoughts?

Not to hijack the thread, but I'm in the same pickle with the chrome mount/black pitot. I'm pretty sure you can't chrome plate something unless it's metallic. You could paint it with some silver paint, though. I'll either try that, or paint the pitot and mount to match. Wish I hadn't sprung for the chrome mount way back when. :rolleyes:

gretz pitot
 

The Gretz people say not to paint it because of the heat. We are going to just let it fade and weather as is. Maybe it can be painted with some chrome heat resistant engine enamel. I dont know how hot it will get, but I bet pretty hot. Its one of those little surprises we expected to see a chrome probe too when we opened the box.. oh well at least the mast looks pretty.

Back to our Program...
 

Can we get back to the question on the wire routing? I'm at that point now and am sure interested on aft to forward routing.

Jim

Ok, ok, back to the original question. A lot of the wiring runs depend on where you put the strobe power supply, trim switches, antennas, etc.

From the tail, my nav light wire runs up the floor of the tail w/o conduit. I used some of the sticky tie-wrap mounts. It then goes up the left side of the tunnel, through F-704 to the firewall and up alongside the firewall recess. I used tie-wrap mounts with screws everywhere except on exterior skins.


I have the strobe power supply under the baggage floor, so that wire branches off in the baggage compartment. Elev trim wire follows a similar route to the pilot stick.

I drilled some holes going side-to-side just aft of the control sticks. The strobe wires for the wings run straight forward under the baggage floor/pilot seat and then out to the wings using those holes.


I located stuff in the left vs. right wing to balance the fill in the conduits. I also made a diagram of the tight wiring spots (mainly the F-704 wiring holes) and made a list of every wire passing through each spot. That enabled me to balance the wires. I didn't need any extra holes in the F-704 (so far).

In a nutshell, the main wiring runs are the central tunnel, the transverse run just aft of the control sticks, along the front of the central spar, and up both sides of the firewall recess.

Trying to find pictures on my site, I realize I haven't taken many pictures of the wiring process. I'll try to snap a few more of where all the wires are at.

Central Tunnel Wiring Runs
 

Dave,

Did you have room for all the wires (strobe, nav power, trim power, A/P and antenna coax) to fit through the existing wire holes in the spar? I assume that we take the bundle, run it under the center floor cover then up the side of the forward/ heat cover? I have the strobe power under baggage floor and hope to keep the a/p, strobe, and antenna coax seperate.

Jim