Wiring continues

Guess the cat is out of the bag as I made the VP newsletter :). Wiring continues... I'm bogged down a little perfecting the final placement of items on the avionics shelf and figuring out the final placement of the MVP-50 engine monitor (see post below about that). I've also decided on a low cost solution for ground blocks. For wire sizes up to 18ga, I've decided to use a DB25 connector scheme. Basically it will work like this.

I got some 1/16" thick, double sided printed circuit board material from Frys. I'll cut a small pattern out of it that will fit inside a Shell housing for a DB25 female solder cup connector. On the side where the connector will go, you simply press the circuit board material into the two rows of solder cups edgewise. 1/16" thick board makes for a tight, but not too tight press fit. Then you solder each of the cups to the circuit board. Now drill a hole thru the board for the larger wire that will run to the ground buss and connect it to the circuit board making sure it will all fit inside the shell when it's assembled around it. Connect that to your ground buss and poof, when you need a ground you just add another male pin with a crimped wire and pin to the opposite male DB25 connector. You'll need to size the larger ground wire for the max size of current that the DB25 ground will provide. In my case, I think #10 or even #12 will work just fine. It might be a trick getting a lug onto the wire and screw connected to the circuit board, I haven't tried that yet. As a fall back, use the same process, but cut the board material so it hard mounting ears and don't use the shell halfs. A pretty easy and simple way to do grounds... All the credit goes to Bob Knuckolls tho, I just evolved the concept to use a solder cup connector and circuit board material instead of 2 wires soldered across the cups....

I'll take a set of pictures when I build my first one... I don't want to cut ground wires until I get all placement done first tho as I don't want to waste wire...

MVP-50 - Blind Mount option

I just got some really good news.... It seems that EI makes a "blind mount" option for the MVP-50 engine monitor. I'm going to use this monitor and didn't want yet another display in the panel. I contacted them at Marc's suggestion and found out that they were thinking of making a Blind Mount. I called them and they offered to exchange or upgrade my display to the new mount. It lays the display down and provides mounting holes. It also reorients the DB25 connector to come out the side when laying down. I got a mock up drawing and entered it into CAD so I could print a mounting template to use while I worked on wiring and waited for my unit to be exchanged.

Here is the template in PDF.

Once I get the actual unit, I'll be sure and post pictures...

Power Grids

These are the Lancair Power grids, they include battery contactors, xtie, and ANL's. Notice the Avionice Buss contactor has been removed as it's not needed any longer

Wiring - the placement of things

I got distracted with finishing my baffling for the last little while... But that is almost done, and in between wiring labling, I've formalized some placements of the redboxes, the battery boxes, the contactor modules, etc.

In my Legacy, redboxes, batteries and contactor modules (I'm using the ones from Lancair) will go behind the seat backs. I'm putting a 24v Concorde battery behind the co-pilot seat (to balance weight when single pilot) and the Buss B battery and associated stuff will go behind the pilot seats.

Canopy seal - part 2

If you read below, you'll see some info about an automatic canopy seal that I've been working on. It seems that the little electronic valve that I got requires voltage to stay switched. If you leave main voltage on it, it gets rather hot. But, they are made for a much reduced voltage to hold their switched position. To accomodate that, you need something called a "Hit and Hold" circuit. It turns out that in my case, a 24v valve, can be held with 1/3 it's voltage or 8volts. This should drop the current *way* down and keep the temps cool. I found a company that actually makes a "Hit and Hold' device just for this purpose. They have a 1/2 and a 1/3 voltage version and so I'll be trying one of them. It's called a "CoolCube" and is available from here http://www.bio-chemvalve.com

Harness is here!

Ok, so a big box full of colored wire showed up today at my house. I've got to sort it all out and spend some time labeling the wires with a Brady labeler (www.bradyid.com). It's called an IDXpert and if you haven't looked at it, it's truely awesome.... Here's the link Brady IDXpert Labeler

Harness at VP ready to ship

Wiring harness is just about ready to ship. You all know that VP offers this service with their systems. I don't know the costs of it, but they will be offering it when you purchase a system from them. Plan long term is to have the individual wires each laser labeled. Man won't that be *sweet*.