Wire Gauges???

[BGordon]

Good morning,
I plan to rivet my ribs to my spar today and need to prep them for my lighting wire runs. I will be running wires for a strobe, position, and landing/taxi lights and was wondering what gauge wires will these pieces of equipment will require? As well as any recomendations as to a size gromet to use to thread the wires through the ribs.
Thanks,
Brandon

[danielhv]

Originally Posted by BGordon

Good morning,
I plan to rivet my ribs to my spar today and need to prep them for my lighting wire runs. I will be running wires for a strobe, position, and landing/taxi lights and was wondering what gauge wires will these pieces of equipment will require? As well as any recomendations as to a size gromet to use to thread the wires through the ribs.
Thanks,
Brandon

Brandon, the typical way of doing this is to drill holes through each rib to allow a peice of flexible conduit to pass from the wing tip to the wing root. This will allow you to run your wires as well as any future wires... Take a look at Brad's site... here is what I'm talking about:

http://www.rv7factory.com/log/061125.php

and here is the conduit from Vans:

http://www.vansaircraft.com/cgi-bin/...wiring-conduit

As far as what gauge of wire etc, i can't fully answer your question as Im not sure on that yet. Best place to get those answers are here, and the best place to buy the stuff for wiring is SteinAir!

Let me know if you have any other questions!

[MCA]

Best thing is to run conduit now. The size wire will depend on the load - are you going to use LED strobes or standard? HID lights or halogen? The standard strobes use a 3 conductor jacketed wire with a drain whereas the LED strobes use standard wire. It can't hurt to start planning your electrical now.

[alpinelakespilot2000]

Once you know about how many AMPs your various items will draw, you then need to go to the appropriate chart in the electrical chapter of AC43.13 to see what gauge wire is required. That said, the back of Aeroelectric Connection has diagrams that have been perfectly accurate in my case. Really the only exception is with the recent prevalence of LEDs for NAV or landing lights. If in doubt, just run a bigger wire. There's really no disadvantage to running larger AWG given the very little wiring that is in most of our planes.

Short of going through those motions, and as Brian mentioned, just run the corrugated tubing and you can decide this all much (read years) later at which time you can benefit from the latest and greatest in low-power lighting. There's absolutely no need to wire the wings right now. Good luck.

[BGordon]

Thanks guys, it sounds as if the conduit is the unanimous decision. I went ahead and drilled the holes and will order the conduit from Van's sometime next week.
Brandon