Odds & Ends

So it's been a while since the last update. Things are going well, but slowly. We've been working on sanding the inside of the cabin cover, installing conduit along the front "A-pillars" and "B-pillars", and filling in the voids with spray foam to then cover with fiberglass. I'm also trying to come up with the desired shape for the overhead switch panel, which will contain all my lights and dimming controls. I received my switch and terminal order from Digikey the other day, so I took a piece of scrap aluminum and quickly made a (very) rough mockup of what I had envisioned for the switch panel:

Overhead switch panel, v0.0.1

It came out "okay"... I think there needs to be a bit more room vertically between the dimmers and the switches, and also maybe just a smidge more space between each toggle, although I can live with it as-is. The idea will also be to have both the upper and lower edges of the panel curved, to better fit in the given space and give it kind of a more elegant look. At least that's what I'm going for-- it may very well end up looking like some kind of super-cheesy clown smile instead. We'll see.

I need to figure out how to illuminate these too. Right now the thought is to make a piece of clear acrylic that is painted a solid opaque color, and is then etched to allow light to pass through for all the legends and graphics. Another option would be to get a panel made from a place like engravers.net and backlight them with LED's. Although I like that idea (and I've seen some really sweet-looking panels made this way), I'd like to first try the acrylic method and see how far I can get. This will be on a growing list of back-burner projects that I'll get to, eventually.

Continuing on the electrical side of things, I also received my order for 12V accessory plugs. I kind of "splurged" on this and went with the VW/Audi parts that I've seen discussed on the forums. They're pretty slick-looking-- they have a spring-loaded door with "12V" marked on the front, and should provide a nice finishing touch to the interior when it all comes together. I'd take a picture, but one of the parts I received was incorrect and I'll need to exchange that out before I can move forward on this. There will be a total of three outlets in the plane: one for each of the two front passengers, and a third in the middle for the back seat.

I'm also working on preparations for the avionics. Specifically, I'm drafting all of my own wiring diagrams for the plane using the program Kicad, an open-source schematic capture and PCB layout program I've used for quite some time on a number of different projects. This is of course BY FAR the biggest of those projects, and it's going to take many weeks (if not months) to finalize a wiring diagram before I can actually cut, strip and crimp my first wire. The diagram will be comprehensive in nature and cover all of the avionics interconnects (of which there are many hundreds) as well as ship's wiring for things like lights, trim, flaps, etc etc. It's a fun task (yes, I actually enjoy this stuff) but it's also very tedious and does take a long time. It also has a tendency to make me cross-eyed after a few hours of reading through the thousands of PDF pages of install manuals and datasheets, trying to figure everything out. I'm getting there, slowly but surely!

Alright, I've talked enough. Here's a few pictures of many of the other accomplishments made this last week:

Rigged up the GSA28 pitch servo, and installed the optional Van's RV-10 ADAHRS tray to hold another GSA28 servo for the yaw damper. Fabricated a bracket to hold the yaw damper bellcrank, centered behind the elevator bellcrank. I'll probably re-make the ADAHRS tray itself out of thicker material and extend it forward slightly so I can also mount my GDL39R ADSB box. I also re-made the yaw damper arm into a more "boomerang" shape that has slightly different geometry that will work better with the movement of the rudder cables. I'll make a full post about the yaw damper and all the parts used to construct it once it's finalized.

Installed the Tosten stick grips... yay! I may cut another bit off the sticks to bring them down just a tad more. I started with them in a little high because... well... you can always cut more off but it's real hard to make them taller again!

Lastly, a quick montage of cutting out the rear NACA vent holes. Thanks to my friend Derek for stopping over and taking some of the action shots :-)

Traced the front NACA hole onto a piece of Lean Pockets cardboard, cut it out, and then traced it on this location in the aft fuselage skin. The vertical line shown is 10" back from (and parallel to) the seam between the mid fuse side skin and the tailcone, with a centerline drawn between the two rivet lines.

Me getting started with the cut using a Dremel tool

Cut almost done...

After a bit of filing, it looks great! Just the same as the holes in the front... woo!

That's it for now... until next time!