Not a lot of time to work on the airplane this weekend, but I did manage to finish wiring the aileron/elevator trim controller:
Need to order some more shielded wire in order to continue… not to mention find some time to work on the airplane for a change!
The AFS angle of attack system comes with a wiring harness of sorts… actually it's just a a bundle of wire several feet long, with a d-sub connector on one end. Rather than try to splice their provided wiring into my electrical system, I just de-pinned all the wires except the ribbon cable that attaches the brain box to the display.
Then I ran all the various wires to the AOA brain box… power, ground, button inputs, flap detect switch, etc. Which looks a lot like a bunch of wires and a box:
I spent a couple days playing with scraps of sheet metal until I'd built a little cosmetic housing for the AOA system's glareshield display. The battery in my camera was dead, so sadly I don't have any photos of the process, but basically I just hammer-formed it out of thin alclad over wood blocks. The shape ended up being somewhat strange, since it has to sit level on the sloping glareshield.
Riveted together and painted… Sadly, I forgot to take a picture of the finished product mounted on the glareshield, but I'll put one up when I install it for good.
I did manage to get a photo of the grommet I put in the forward fuselage skin for the AOA display wires, which is much less interesting:
I plugged the display into the ribbon cable to give the AOA setup a basic functionality test. All the lights came on, so I guess it's working.
The ribbon cable connector is kind of a one-shot deal, so rather than risk breaking it trying to get it to release its grip on the ribbon cable, I just cut off the last foot or so and put it back in the box until I need to install it permanently.
The remaining length of ribbon cable will remain spooled up in the cockpit until I finally install the AOA display for good, at which point I'll cut it to length and splice the wires back together.
When I was up refreshing my night currency in the rental 172 a few weeks ago, I noticed that Cessna put a little light bulb above the fuel selector valve so you can see it at night. I found this to be a nice touch, and thought it might be neat to put something like that in my airplane too.
I bought a blue LED from the local Radio Shack, and hooked it up to a bench power supply (along with a suitable dropping resistor) to see how bright it is. Yeah, that's probably plenty bright:
I soldered a 1k resistor to one of the leads, which will run the LED at about half brightness. Then I shrink-wrapped the resistor and leads:
I bought a couple different diameters of thin-wall aluminum tubing at the local hardware emporium, and made this little spotlight hood for the LED. The flange at the base of the LED is squared up against the end of the smaller tube, and it's all potted together with JB Weld.
I played with a lot of different mounting locations, and eventually settled on this spot at the forward end of the throttle quadrant. I made a little mounting plate out scrap alclad, painted everything black, and mounted the spotlight with an adel clamp. Although it's tight in there, the throttle cable has plenty of clearance from the lamp.
Here's a wider view. The end of the lamp is not visible to the pilot or passenger, so there won't be any glare.
Hey, how cool is this? I love doing these little custom touches.
Some time ago I bought an expensive SIRS whiskey compass, and preparing for its installation has been on my to-do list for quite some time. Since I'm still on flu recovery detail, I figured this would be an easy enough project. First I had to go find the rollbar, brace, and forward top skin:
I marked a location on the rollbar brace that puts the bottom of the compass about a half-inch above the glareshield, to allow room to install a nice-looking trim piece later on.
I marked a centerline on the rollbar brace using a handy piece of angle, and drilled two rivet holes using a V-block. I won't actually rivet the compass mount to the brace until I first send it off to be powder coated.
I tested the internal lighting with a bench power supply… yep, it works.
Then I ran wires from the panel light dimmer to a spot just below where the compass will mount, and put a plug on it. Didn't remember to take a picture of this, but you can imagine what it looks like. The compass is now back in its box, and will likely be one of the last pieces of instrumentation to be permanently installed.
I have this idea that I'll install a small map light on either side of the cockpit… I haven't figured out exactly where I'll put the dimmer knobs, or even the lights themselves, but that hasn't stopped me from buying a pair of LED lights and dimmer modules. One of the latter is shown here:
I mounted a dimmer to the F-721A canopy deck on either side of the cockpit, which seemed like an okay location.
I removed the included attachment feet and made some mounting brackets out of scrap alclad. The odd shape is required to clear the traces on the board, and the nutplates are there to allow me to remove the thing later on if it goes blooey.
Just to see if it would all work, I hooked up one of the dimmers to one of the map lights and a bench power supply…
Well, it all works. Eventually I'll find a place to put these.
