Impressions (part 2)

I was thinking about what I wrote yesterday and realized that maybe I should drop some info in the Blog about what to do differently while Planning your VP based airplanes.

a) Component placement - one of the first basic things that you'll need to thing thru is where will you put things. Not only the VP components, but also the individual devices that you'll control. When you build your LPW, you'll need to spec lengths of wire and it's certainly eaiser to make them longer and cut them off to what you need than it is to have one be short due to revised placement and then need to "splice" two wires together. This isn't a VP specific action btw, it would need to be done either way, but if you are going to buy a VP harness, you'll need to think thru this up front.

b) Grounds - Especially if you are building a composite airplane, you'll need to think thru grounding. The VP harness will give you want you need to provide power, trim, flaps, and some control functions, but it won't give you provisions for specific device grounds. If you design "cluster" spots for components to terminate their grounds that will help. Then you can use either ground terminal blocks, or other types of clustering to provide the individual grounds and then take that ground back to the central ground buss between the engine and batteries

c) Wire sizes obviously, but you'll need to do that no matter what

d) While in a traditional environment you need to think thru what goes on what buss. The concept of a main buss and an endurance buss is slightly different with a VP environment. Each CU actually has it's own "endurance" buss back to it's battery, so what you actually have to think thru in a VP environment is your "load shed" plan. This means that if you have some form of electrical failiure (alternator, battery, etc), that you think more about what devices you would want on in which emergency situation than you do what buss to put devices on or what contactor configuration would be needed to power a specific device. It is good practice however to take devices that are "dual in nature", like 2 EFIS displays and put one on one CU and the other on the other if going a VP Duo system.

e) Switches and overrides - *make sure* you read the installation section on these, they allow your system to become extremely flexible in a failure situation. VP has thought thru most of the scenarios and thru a combination of switch and override modes you can make your solution for any emergency or trouble simple

f) Checklists - at some point, you'll need to develop a checklist that can be used for each flight mode. This will make it easier to establish "flows" and reduce cockpit workload.

g) Power connectors - once you get your harness, make sure you learn how to add or move wires if needed. It's easier to learn this skill before you put in the harness than after when you may be constrained on space. Also there are a couple of "help me's" that the guys at VP have created to show you what the connectors should look like when you open them, what not to do and how each should work. Get *very* familiar with the documentation section of the VP site.

h) Avionics Master - let's see, what do they say on the Sopranos.... fugetaboutit, ya don't need it with VP, plus you get added benefits in that only those things that you want on during the particular "Mode" are on. Huge benefit if trying to start an engine on a 12v system with EFIS technology that might be sensative to turning off when voltage drops below a certain threshold.

i) Items you can ignore! :) - I say that tongue in cheek. To some extent you can ignore the "fancy feature devices". For example with VP you no longer need to think about what you need to buy to provide flap steps and control; trim authority, control and speed; light dimming, control and functions; annunciator panels, control, audio prompts; external triggers like canopy open, baggage open, etc; Most of these are included in the fuctions of the VP 200 systems and some are included in the 100 systems. This saves you a significant amount on items that you'd normally want to purchase separately in order to facilitate these functions.

Ok, that should get you started. There are 2 primary rules in getting starting with VP. A) RTFM - Read the darn installation manual; B) RTFMA - Read the darn installation manual again! Then if you have any question, get on VP's forums and post a question or give Marc and team a call.

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