Impressions so far (part 1)

I spent a few minutes (I am after all trying to get this bloody thing flying) in retrospect, thinking about the differences between the original way I was going to wire the airplane and the way it will end up being wired (I'm sorta in the middle/end of that process right now).

Last year, I spent what seemed like forever developing a "wirebook" to aid me in wiring the airplane. This was before I met Marc and the gang at Vertical Power. My original information and wirebook can be found here .

Since that time I've got a hole new appreciation for the amount of effort that original intent would have taken. I've also learned of some of the inflexibility that it would have caused. And also some of the weight that it would have generated. Which, by switching to the VP DUO, I won't have. Here are just a few of the examples.


a) Panel wiring and weight - this is how the back of just the "breaker" area would have looked if I had gone down the path of doing panel breakers. Each device that required a breaker would have required a lenght of wire to be run from the device to the breaker and breaker to battery contactor buss.

b) Fat wires - see those fat wires in that picture above. Depending on where your battery(s) were located, you'd have to run a fat wire from the Alternator(s) to the battery(s) and then up to the panel where usually the breakers ans busses are constructed. In my case, the batteries will be in the tail, so that represents a pretty huge savings in weight that I won't need to do.


c) Space constraints - originally, you have to think in terms of what I'll call a "clustered" power environment. I also needs to be packed into the panel area. I was always trying to constrain space to allow for maximum flexibility around wiring on the back of the panel. This would provide the most flexibility for service down the road, but at the compromise of the smallest area to work in. Ever noticed that you always look at the back of a panel, when you look at some elses handiwork and wonder how they got all that stuff in there. With VP, you end up in a more "distributed" power environment, one where there is a central distribution point, but it doesn't have to be located behind the panel if you elect not to.

d) the other area that your don't really think about centers around the amount of effort required to determine the size and length of wires, how many things need to be connected and where they will get their power. The tools that VP have developed thru the use of their LPW (Load Planning Worksheet) and installation documentation because a huge contributor in saving me loads of time as I retooled and switched from the "old school" to the new VP environment. It created a logical tool to organize your thots, determine distances, wire sizes, breaker sizes and then utimately culminated in a pre-made wiring harness. In my case there are close too 100 wires that all I had to do was "lay them in" and connect them up.

I've read recent posts about people being "scared" to tackle wiring their own airplane and especially their own panel. With the VP approach and their tools, you can't go wrong. Oh, and did I talk about their support, it's excellent.





I've got some more to add to this stream of thot, but for now here's a close up of my panel, it's lack of breakers, switches, etc for you to look at. Me - I want to go work on my airplane.... More with new pictures later.