LettersFromFlyoverCountry

LettersFromFlyoverCountry

Well Known Member
I have seen references in various places to RV wiring diagrams or wiring run suggestion diagrams being in some Van's instructions. Not in mine. Does such a reference exist anywhere?
 
they come with vans harness. the harnesses are useless unless you are building the plane to spec. meaning no efis, no engine monitor, standard switchbreaker bank and so on. if you are building it to spec they are nice. the diagrams give a good flow to things. the vans harness sends a wire to each wing for strobe power but the reccomended kit is a single power supply unit. IIRC
 
cytoxin said:
... the harnesses are useless unless you are building the plane to spec...
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I agree 100%. I bought the harness and cut it all apart and used parts of it. The drawings were worth the cost. Check with Van's, you might be able to buy just the drawings.

I did use 'lectric Bob's book, Van's diagram, Tony B's diagram, and a few others to come up with my own design.

Running the wires was fairly straight forward. Just run them one at a time, terminate them, test them, and move on to the next run.
 
Hand drawing works well

Drawing your own by hand develops a good feel for your system and supports your later maintenance efforts. I drew the wiring on two sheets with common interconnect symbols for power and ground. One sheet was dedicated to electrical systems of all varieties except avionics and the other is for avionics. Basically all you have to do is draw rectangles representing all of the termination items: lights, radios, antennas, relays, switches, circuit breakers, alternators, starters, etc. Then identify all of the termination points on them and draw in the interconnecting unshielded wires, shielded wires and coaxs. Identify the wire types and gauges that you are going to use. There is an FAA document that will allow you to determine the wire guage needed for voltage, current and length of wire involved. The drawing in Van's manual was good for the requirements for the the basic power system and the vendor documents tell you what the input and output requirements are for the items you want to include in your airplane. Different manufacturers have different identification standards for signals so it can get a little complex deciding which wire on box 1 connector P1 pin A is connected to Box 2, connector P3, pin Z if say you are using a Terra comm panel and a mixture of Terra, Apollo and Garmin avionics. However, going through the grunt work of figuring this out is a very valuable experience.

Bob Axsom
 
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Wiring Run

Bob:

Look in the front part of the Builders Manual, the part with the tools needed, pop rivets etc. IIRC there was a rudementary electrical schematic/drawing in that general info section before you get to the actual building instructions.

It even had a wire guage/length chart. You can use that to make your own by adding or deleting items.
 
Bob, I found there are three things that really worked for me.

1) AC43-13B, Chapter 11 (Electrical). You can download this section from the web through the FAA site. Lots of good stuff from wire sizing to securing your bundles.
2) AeroElectric Connection: The architecture drawings are well worth it.
3) Wiring kit from Stein. I bought almost all my electrical stuff from Stein with no problems.

Jim
 
Wireing Run Diagrams

Van's construction manual, section 5, has several pages on wiring and also Van's 1-pager of a "typical" wiring solution. Section 5 can also be downloaded from Van's web site. Go to Van's Construction FAQ, and look for "Materials used in RV Airframes (Section 5) Part 2". This is the section that talks about the aircraft wiring.

Van's airframe wiring kit contains several large sheets of wiring diagrams that correspond to the pre-fabricated wiring harness (kits) that can be ordered for the different models of RV's.

I am a huge fan of the AeroElectric Connection Book. Even if you decide to just follow someone elses wiring schematic, THE BOOk will answer just about any question that may come up...and the pros and cons for different solutions.

I created my RV-6A wiring diagrams using the "DRAW" feature of MicroSoft's Word program. Most people do not realize, or take advantage of, the ablities available in that app. If you would like, I can send you what I have. The file includes about 15 pages of schematics , including the static/pitot system, fuel system, brake system, and a page of electrical symbols (all in Word) that can be coppied/ pasted in different parts of the document. Just open it with Word as you would any .wrd document.
 
OP-10

Bob Collins said:
I have seen references in various places to RV wiring diagrams or wiring run suggestion diagrams being in some Van's instructions. Not in mine. Does such a reference exist anywhere?
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Bob,

I found DWG OP-10 to be a very helpful reference and referred to it often. It contains plenty of concise information relevant to wiring a basic RV. The DWG includes a detailed and easy to understand wiring schematic and all manner of useful information that answered many of my wiring questions.

​
 
Drawings can be bought from Van

I bought OP-10 and other drawings from Vans. Check in the parts list (search for "OP") and you should see several drawings come up. As I recall they were $2 - 3 each.
 
This is what you need

Bob-

This has all the relevant drawings + text instructions that are sent with the wiring kit, but is sold separately.

WIRING DWGS AND TEXT
DOC ES HARNESS-6/7/9 $15.00

I found it much more helpful than any generic sources for wire routing.

Hope this helps.
 
One other thought

Bob,

What you draw your schematic in is unimportant, what is important is your design.

Make a list of all the electrical equipment you will need to power along with the power required for each. That is the starting point you will need. The Van's drawing at the beginning of the manual will give you an idea for wire sizes as will the other sources mentioned above.

After drawing mine up I posted them here and to all our EAA chapter "experts" for their opinion.

The trick is to design the electrical system to fit your needs. My -9 is a day/night VFR ship and I'm very comfortable flying w/o radios and lights so I wasn't looking for redundancy there.

My Dynon EFIS has an internal battery as does my Garmin GPS so I didn't feel the need to have an essential bus or any other fancy wiring setup. Again, this is for my plane and doesn't necessarily apply to your thinking or comfort level.

This is where you get put your ideas in motion. Take your time and think through what you want/need and put them in your drawing.

One thing that one of our chapter "experts" suggested was to put one 12 volt power port on the always hot bus with a 7.5 amp breaker. That way I can put a trickle charger on it while working on panel or later to keep the battery charged between flights or on cold nights.

BTW, when I was finished I had three drawings; the main bus, the avionics bus, and the always hot bus. It was just easier for me to think in those terms. (All three drawings are on my web site, if you want to take a look.)
 
As it turns out, pages 5-17, 5-18-, 5-19 and 5-20 are missing from my instruction manual and I believe those are the references mentioned in several messages above.

Is there anyone who can scan these pages (RV-7A, by the way) and send them to me?
 
Bob,
Are you asking about the 'Electrical Wiring Notes' ?
My year 2001 manual has section 5, pages 7 through 11,
for the electrical notes.
There might have been a later change.

I would be glad to scan mine and send them to you.

Tom

Edit: The new section-5, pages 17-21 are available at
Van's website. See below.

http://www.vansaircraft.com/pdf/section 5r9b.pdf
 
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Once you get your head around the schematic the next stage is to determine the physical layout and wiring runs. I think I'm finally there with that. You need to take into account antenna locations, strobe power box location, bulkhead penetrations, available support structure, service loops so that you can remove the panel for easy access to the rear of it etc.

I used OP-10 for the basics.

Jim Sharkey
 
Yeah, I've been working on that. I'm pretty minimalist (well, I am now that I've run the numbers on my original plans.) with the plan and Kevin Faris gave me some great ideas for a wire route. The power supply for the strobes is in, and I hope to run the wires to the tail today. I have manual trim so I don't have a lot of wiring back there and I'm anxious to get it in and get that area closed up.

The one thing I'll be interested in seeing is how much space I'll have to run wires through the 704 (center bulkhead). The manual trim cable takes up one of the two holes provided. Oh well. Part of the fun.
 
Bob,

On my -6 I'm running headset cables through the respective L&R hand outboard boxed in section of the F-604. I'm using 1/4" O/D plastic brake line tubing as a bushing/fairlead similar to the way the static line is run. I will heat shrink the cables to the tube on either side of the penetration to keep everything secure. It'll keep them tucked out of the way with a minimal hole drilled through the structure. They then run under the arm rests to socket boxes tucked on top of the back corners of the arm rests.

The COMM antenna is mounted on the LH belly on a fabricated bracket between the seat ribs just FWD of the F-605. The feedline will run down the LH footwell sidewall, along the front of and through the the main spar, under the floor and up to the antenna. The wings aren't fitted yet so details TBD.

The transponder antenna is mounted through the thick floor skin of the RH footwell just in front of the main spar with the feedline running down the RH footwell sidewall, along the front of the main spar and connecting to the antenna.

The ELT is mounted on the stiffened RH flap linkage cover with the antenna mounted through the triangular stiffener on the top of the turtle deck just aft of the rear window on my tip-up.

The strobe power unit is mounted on the floor just aft of the RH seat so the high tension lines will head left and right to the wing tips with the tail line running back along the RH side of the tail cone.

All of this should keep the antennas far enough apart and away from the strobe power unit. Also the antenna, strobe and audio lines are not running together at any point.

Nav, landing and 12V strobe power leads run down the firewall and back along the middle of the floor of the footwell per OP-10 but I plan to use the -6 center console channel for running the flap power, electric trim and D100 magnetometer lines. These will meet up with the tail light cable and pass through the center tunnel and down the center of the tail cone. The magnetometer will be on a tilted bracket on top of the flat aft deck panel with the OAT under and towards the outboard tip of the HS. Again this should keep everything apart that needs to be.

Haven't decided where to run the ELT "phone line". Probably through a grommet in the floor just FWD of the F-605 next to the RH sidewall and back up via the center console channel to the ELT remote which is mounted in the the middle of and on the bottom edge of the panel.

In the words of Baldrick of Black Adder fame - I have a cunning plan. I'll let everyone know how it works when I finally get it all in the air.

I'm still being "educated and recreated" at this stage in the game.

Jim Sharkey
 
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