EFIS arrived, Control sticks installed
I received my Grand Rapids EFIS stuff on Friday. Great fun. On Thursday I dove into working out the control sticks which took me almost three days to complete.
Installing the control sticks started with a careful consideration of how long they should be. One problem with making a final decision on this is the fact that the final control stops aren’t installed without the elevator and ailerons. The main concern is the forward stick position clearance of the instrument panel and controls. I chose to simply trim the sticks to clear the bottom of the instrument panel, even though I don’t think they will get that far forward once the elevator is installed with the stops. As far as engine control interference, once again, I don’t think the stick will get that far with the aileron stops. We’ll just have to see much later at final assembly. Anyway, I went ahead and trimmed the sticks like I said and moved forward. It is a little bit of a gamble but the worst that could happen is to have to trim a little more (then with all of the wires in them) later.
Moving on to other considerations, I decided that the right side stick will not be removable because the passenger will almost always be Tanya (I’m not afraid of commitment to a plan :), and she will be a pilot just as much as me. I think we’re going to be flying this thing almost as much from the right seat. So, I drilled the right stick and put an AN3 bolt through it. This then allows for full controls in the stick grip. I drilled for a small grommet at the base of the sticks for the grip wires to pass through and used some expandable sleeve to protect the wires. I’m using RAC 307 grips on both sides with the two aux momentary switches being com1 flip-flop and autopilot disconnect (control wheel steering). Soldering all of the wires to the grip switches was a fun exercise. I love my new super-duper whiz-bang production soldering iron. It makes this kind of stuff so easy and repeatable with precisely controlled heat. The stick grips are all wired up and completely assembled. I also spent some time working with the aileron trim spring assembly. I concluded that this could only be a temporary setup that will need major adjustment in the linkage when the aileron stops are installed.
I kind of did a build sprint to complete the stick grips so I could move on to the EFIS wiring. The first thing I did was drill the holes for mounting the AHRS up front and the magnetometer in back. The paper templates that I made long ago as place holders and built around were perfect. Then I drug out all of the wires for the three EFIS displays, the EIS, and AHRS and began to identify what was what and the wires that I wasn’t going to use and could be removed. This took me a couple of hours. I got the harness thinned out quite a bit, mainly because I already have a lot of the interconnects in the plane hooked up to the radios. While I was doing the heavy thinking, Tanya came out and volunteered to pull wires. I happily set her up to pull all of the long wires from the AHRS to the magnetometer which she did with great skill. I decided to punch a 3/4″ hole on the left and right sides of the sub-panel to put a snap bushing that will pass all of the EFIS and EIS wires. With the wiring routing figured out now I’m pulling all these wires and terminating them into their 25pin D-sub connectors (9 connectors in all).
