Carl Froehlich
Well Known Member
All,
The good news is this Saturday a new RV-14A received its Certificate of Airworthiness. The proud builder is Claudio Tonnini located at Old Bridge NJ (3N6). This is Claudio's fourth RV. I helped with some of the wiring. He is looking to do the first flight next weekend.
The wiring that comes with the kits and the vendor provided panel were the most frustrating aspect of getting this plane ready to fly. While I understand the team at Van's responding to customer demand to make more "soup to nuts" kits, I did not find this approach to be of value.
Here are a few of the tips I offer to RV-14 builders:
- Defer wiring until after the air frame is complete (just like you would do with any other kit). The one exception to this is to install the pitot heat controller if you are planning on using one. Take all the wiring that comes with the various kits for use as raw material when you get ready to wire.
- Immediately cut off the tiny, fragile elevator and aileron trim servo connectors and throw them as far as you can. Similarly do not use the kit provided servo wiring or end connectors. After you run a standard servo wire (a 22 gauge four conductor shielded wire works well and has good mechanical properties) install a standard Molex plug at the servo. Pot the ends of the plug in RTV to mitigate wire flex fatigue. Try to not add all the other connectors that Van's has between the panel and the servos.
- Replace the kit provided wing NAV/Strobe wire with three or four conductor 20 gauge shielded wire. Same for the tail NAV/Strobe.
- Unless you are running a legacy vacuum powered six pack, the single firewall mounted PC-680 does not have ample reserve power if you plan on flying IFR. You will need to mitigate this limitation.
- If you do build for IFR, please consider one of the many power distribution plans that provide some redundancy over the standard one battery, one alternator, one master and one avionics switch setup.
- One nice trick the boys at Van's did was to make the slick ADAHRS module holder in the wing. The downside is they made it for only one ADAHRS module and most people will want two. For you SkyView users the good folks at Dynon have an equally slick plate that lets you stack two modules on top of each other. This works well for the RV-14 ADAHRS module bracket. The multiple 1/4" tubing runs (Pitot, Static and AOA) can get a little tight.
- For the AOA users do not install the mechanical stall warning. Put a dab of mico then piece of fiberglass inside the wing leading edge to fill up the holes Van's punched for this stall warning.
For the few of you that want to make your own panel, send me a note for ideas. The top of the line panel in this plane was provided by an avionics shop. In addition to costing a boatload more than just the cost of the avionics, it ended up creating days of rework.
Not sent to disparage Van's or anyone else. Just sharing my experience. As I'm on my third RV build I'm an obvious fan of the Van's team.
Carl
RV-8A (sold)
RV-10 (sold, and I'm still trying to get over the pain)
RV-8 (empennage about done, waiting for the rest of the slow build kits)
The good news is this Saturday a new RV-14A received its Certificate of Airworthiness. The proud builder is Claudio Tonnini located at Old Bridge NJ (3N6). This is Claudio's fourth RV. I helped with some of the wiring. He is looking to do the first flight next weekend.
The wiring that comes with the kits and the vendor provided panel were the most frustrating aspect of getting this plane ready to fly. While I understand the team at Van's responding to customer demand to make more "soup to nuts" kits, I did not find this approach to be of value.
Here are a few of the tips I offer to RV-14 builders:
- Defer wiring until after the air frame is complete (just like you would do with any other kit). The one exception to this is to install the pitot heat controller if you are planning on using one. Take all the wiring that comes with the various kits for use as raw material when you get ready to wire.
- Immediately cut off the tiny, fragile elevator and aileron trim servo connectors and throw them as far as you can. Similarly do not use the kit provided servo wiring or end connectors. After you run a standard servo wire (a 22 gauge four conductor shielded wire works well and has good mechanical properties) install a standard Molex plug at the servo. Pot the ends of the plug in RTV to mitigate wire flex fatigue. Try to not add all the other connectors that Van's has between the panel and the servos.
- Replace the kit provided wing NAV/Strobe wire with three or four conductor 20 gauge shielded wire. Same for the tail NAV/Strobe.
- Unless you are running a legacy vacuum powered six pack, the single firewall mounted PC-680 does not have ample reserve power if you plan on flying IFR. You will need to mitigate this limitation.
- If you do build for IFR, please consider one of the many power distribution plans that provide some redundancy over the standard one battery, one alternator, one master and one avionics switch setup.
- One nice trick the boys at Van's did was to make the slick ADAHRS module holder in the wing. The downside is they made it for only one ADAHRS module and most people will want two. For you SkyView users the good folks at Dynon have an equally slick plate that lets you stack two modules on top of each other. This works well for the RV-14 ADAHRS module bracket. The multiple 1/4" tubing runs (Pitot, Static and AOA) can get a little tight.
- For the AOA users do not install the mechanical stall warning. Put a dab of mico then piece of fiberglass inside the wing leading edge to fill up the holes Van's punched for this stall warning.
For the few of you that want to make your own panel, send me a note for ideas. The top of the line panel in this plane was provided by an avionics shop. In addition to costing a boatload more than just the cost of the avionics, it ended up creating days of rework.
Not sent to disparage Van's or anyone else. Just sharing my experience. As I'm on my third RV build I'm an obvious fan of the Van's team.
Carl
RV-8A (sold)
RV-10 (sold, and I'm still trying to get over the pain)
RV-8 (empennage about done, waiting for the rest of the slow build kits)