Construction Blog and Builder's Resource
Archer antenna wired, secured, and ready for wingtip installation.
Nav light wires (with necessary extensions spliced in) and antenna cable ready for wingtip installation.
Right wingtip rib drilled and clecoed in place.
Right wingtip ready for installation.
Right wingtip wiring complete.
Right wingtip clecoed in place and ready for, ahem, screwing.
Right wingtip fully installed and ready for flight.
Right wingtip drilled to wing, outboard edge sanded smooth, and trailing edge trimmed to match the aileron.
Right wingtip drilled for nutplates.
Archer antenna mounting underway.
Archer antenna drilled to right wingtip in preparation for nutplates.
Right wingtip nutplates clecoed in place. As can be readily seen in this view, I’m seven nutplates short. Thanks, Van’s! I’m now awaiting yet another delivery from Aircraft Spruce.
On the bright side, I took advantage of this shipment to order the steel fittings for the engine. Van’s ships aluminum fittings with their FWF kit and I’m a great believer in steel, especially for the larger fittings used in the engine case for the oil lines and, of course, in the oil cooler.
Pilot-side comm antenna installed.
Left wing back in the stand and right wing temporarily installed.
Left wing back in the stand and right wing temporarily installed.
The first item from the Stein panel crate installed!
Transponder antenna (obviously) now wired to the aft end of the cable installed in the tailcone way back last summer.
A little better view of the panel awaiting its date with the fuselage. The bubble wrap is covering an absolute rat’s nest of wiring and remote boxes, though not nearly all of them.
Getting this all connected – and all of the boxes mounted – is NOT going to be fun.
Fun times crawling into the baggage area today to complete running coiled lines forward from the tailcone. In this case, the forward end of the transponder cable on the right side and the static line on the left side.
I also took a moment to tighten the headset & mic jacks, drill, install, & tighten the LEMO jacks, and connect the 12V power port ground wire. Hey, why not, I was there.
All sorts of stuff has now been run forward and up behind the subpanel. This area is about to look a whole lot worse before it begins to look any better.
I’m going to need to come up with a better stick wiring solution. Stein’s neat little connector backshells won’t pass through the snap bushing holes. I may just connect all the D-sub pins directly and heat shrink them together. We shall see.
