Major cold front passing East TN today...started the day at 68? and by midnight it should be in the 30's. Huge amount of rain and flooding since the ground was already soaked and all the creeks, ponds and other low spots were already full of water. Tons of tornadoes in the South East. Hope all the RV'ers got out of it unharmed!
Thought I would try an update ala Bob Collins today instead of posting pictures. Don't worry Bob, you have nothing to worry about. I stink at video updates!
Anyway....this evening was the end of a 2.5 day push to make some major progress on the panel retro while taking advantage of the 70? temps!!!! Took vacation days to make it happen.
Bottom line is I got most of the aircraft's harness tied to the VP-X Pro's harness on Tuesday. I also installed the backup battery buss and associated parts to charge it and monitor it's voltage via the VP-X Pro. I built the circuit shown on this thread a few pages back.
I also got started on wiring all of the dimmer units back into the airplane. I have 4 dimmers. One each for avionics, map, panel flood and dome lights (I have dome lights under the panel and over the baggage compartment).
I put some 9 pin D-shell male connectors on the bundles that go to the servos. These will serve as a connector for them and will mate with the female ones that I will add to the wiring harnesses that I built at home.
At the end of the day, I riveted the panel ribs in permanent and set forth installing the panel in the airplane. I had to remove the screws from the top and bottom reinforcing angles for the right 2/3 of the panel to allow me to bend it enough to get past the vertical parts of the center spar section. The panel is too wide to make it in without bending it. Once that was done, I had to mark the 6 holes, 3 on each side that are for the screws that tie the bottom of the sides of the panel to the sides of the fuse. These had to be marked and drilled in place since that is how it was done originally. Once marked, the panel had to be bent again and removed, the holes drilled and then re-installed. Once it was back in, I re-installed the screws on the reinforcing angles. Hopefully that is the last time it has to ever come out....
This morning I finished the wiring of the dimmers, terminated all of the VP-X Pro switch grounds and set forth on wiring all of the VP-X Pro switches into the VP-X's switch signal wires.
Next came the connection of the aux buss to the aux buss switch, master switch, 12VDC socket and finally connecting the starter and P-leads to the new keyswitch.
I finished up the day by putting some female connectors on the GX Pilot servo bundles to mate up with the connectors I installed yesterday. Then it was into the airplane with the pre-built and interconnected octopus of a harness that I pre-built at home. I thought I had most of the wires terminated until I added this mess to the mix and the rats nest seemed to instantly re-appear!
Anyway I mounted the harness backplates to the radio trays, connected the Gemini and GX Pilot connectors and started organizing the mess. Most of what is hanging loose at this time is power, backup power and ground wires. Once all of these are sorted and connected I will be a happy man.
Whats left?
Clean up the wiring, more organizing, securing and protecting against chaffing.
Solder on the headset jacks
Mount the GMU73
Poke the EMS harness thru the firewall, mount the new sensors and terminate
Rivet on the patch panels for the old hole in the subpanel
Swap the Dynon servos for the TT ones and rework the connections
Mount and wire the remote compass in the tail
Install the temp probe
Clean and do annual condition inspection on cockpit area.
I am sure there is much more I am forgetting.....
Here is the video update....