Scott & Tanya Card RV9A build log (N4822C)

My Grand Rapids EFIS order shipped from SteinAir yesterday. I talked to Stein for a while about how long it took (5 months). He said this is very normal, and has been the case for about two years, even though GRT is telling customers 8-12 weeks. It sure is the case that product delivery schedules are a very hit or miss endeavor in the experimental aircraft components market. The one, somewhat unique, thing that I can say about GRT is that they don’t hold your money hostage while you are waiting for product to ship. Anyway, I’m super excited that this stuff is finally on its way. This includes the three EFIS (Horizon 1) displays, EIS4000 and its sensors (fuel flow, map, oil and fuel pressures, cht, egt), ARINC 429 module, and internal GPS module. The XM weather module is on back order. The only other thing that I’m currently waiting on is a TruTrak 2.25″ ADI. This is the last of the major equipment expenses for this project. Tanya is happy about that.
I think I’ll have the rest of the radio stack powered up and initial circuit testing done by this Friday when the EFIS stuff is supposed to arrive. Then it will be on to a whole other set of wires :).

On another note, Tanya is progressing with her PPL training. She now has over 20 hours and is chugging right along for a timely completion. Yesterday she did her second cross country flight from Georgetown to Waco. Get this, she flew a new Diamond DA-40 with a Garmin G1000 glass panel for the 2hr flight. Lucky dog. I’m jealous. She said it was super cool. I think that she sometimes has a different experience than the rest of us due to the “chick factor” in this male dominated environment :). You won’t find her apologizing for it either.

First off, when I was verifying all of the radio pinout wiring, I found that Stark had already installed the required resistors in the annunciator flag power leads. He did a very nice job. They are packaged up inside the connector shells. So I quickly cut out the resistors that I installed inline on the power source.
We all struggle with the question of where to mount antennas and ultimately have to make a decision. This is a 9A, not a race car, so my primary GPS1 antenna is going right out in the wind on the top rear of the fuselage. I’m quite sure it will be very happy there. I drilled all the required holes using the Garmin supplied back plate as a template. The connector is just to the left of the of the rib web that is in the center of the fuselage skin there. I cut a round notch in the flange next to the skin for the connector pass through in between two rivets. I then cut the back plate in two so it could be reinstalled on either side of the rib on the back of the skin.

 

  

  

  

  

 

I spent an evening checking all of the connector pin interconnects to be sure they were connected where I thought they were. I went through every pin and every wire on all radios. Stark used different ARINC interfaces than Grand Rapids shows on their diagram but they’ll work just fine. All of the general ARINC In/Out connections are correct. I also broke into one of the 430 connectors and added a wire for COM1 remote flip-flop.

I made up the last blocking diode to put on the master contactor. I shrink wrapped it before installation. Then I moved on to getting the autopilot wrapped up. I needed to get the data input source select switch (DISSS :) installed which involved identifying and soldering six wires onto the small switch. With that done, I worked out a couple of other things like adding the remote disconnect switch wire and serial input from the GPS. I’ve probably had the A/P connector shell apart four or five times by now. Finally it was time to fire this thing up for some amusement. I put in a fuse and applied power and it came to life. Very cool. One push of the button and it goes to altitude and heading hold. The pitch servo became active and was working properly. I have the A/P controller very loosely screwed to the panel and found that if I moved it up and down in pitch, the pitch servo in back would react. Very cool. This was good for at least 20 minutes of fun.

After I got over my excitement with the autopilot, I dove into how exactly I was going to transition the left side bundle of antenna wires. Not so fun. I concluded that I would chomp a big cutout in the forward left corner of the center tunnel cover. I’m splitting some of the standard vans wiring conduit to cover the wires as they transition into the center floor. I certainly have not finished (far from it) my wire chaffing protection measures. I’ll be sure I have everything secured and protected before we’re done. I also did some re-routing of antenna wires back behind the fuel selector valve. I can’t say I’m all that happy with how this routing has worked out, but it will do just fine.

Finally, with all of the antenna wires run, it is time to terminate them at the radio stack. First I took a few minutes to setup my tools and do some practice. It took a bit of tinkering to get the cutter blades set to the right depth. Before long, I was doing BNC antenna connector installs that look great. It took a couple of hours to terminate all of the antennas at the radios but they’re done.

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

I got the mic and headphone jacks wired up and installed in my nifty little side mounts. All wired up back to the audio panel. I applied power to the audio panel and played with headsets for the next hour. Works great.