Wiring Copilot Stick

Paula was thrilled to hear that I wired the copilot stick and made it removable so she could fly if she wanted or not. After much thought and research, this is how I ran the wires from the control stick. My requirements were total freedom of movement and no chance of anything binding the controls. I didn't want any fancy connector apparatus that could potentially jam the controls or holes drilled in the stick so I decided to keep it really simple and route the wires out of the bottom of the stick. The wires are small enough that they would break before jamming anything plus the only thing I'd lose with broken wires is control of trim and PTT (push-to-talk) from one stick. The other stick will still work plus I can always run the trim from the EFIS via the VP-X. I covered the wires with shrink tubing but didn't shrink it so it's a little more flexable.

I added a big service loop so I can easily adjust the length of the wire coming out of the bottom of the stick.

Ray Allen G205 Stick Grips

If you are using the VP-X system and Ray Allen Stick Grips, wiring style 2 is the correct way to wire the grips. They only need a momentary switch to ground which is what style 2 gives you and as an added bonus, it's easier to wire. I bought these used, completely rewired them and added longer leads and secured the wires with tiny zip ties and heat shrink. I tested them with the aileron trim and all the switch positions work fine.

Electric Aileron Trim

Started and finished the electric aileron trim this weekend. It will be controlled by a button on the stick. If there is an imbalance, usually due to fuel burn from one tank, the airplane will try to turn toward the heavy side. To balance that, the trim system compensates by moving the ailerons. Here's the view from the top. The rectangle tab with two holes and wire attached is what moves from side to side to move the ailerons. The wires are just temporarily installed as they need to be .041 stainless safety wire and all I had on hand is .032.

Here's the view looking from inside the tunnel where you can see the bias spring for the aileron trim. It's attached to the bottom of the stick where the aileron pushrods attach. One for each side.

In this picture looking forward, you can see the black trim motor on the bottom left and the boomerang shaped links that attach to a pivot that move the tab left and right. The wires are loose as I still have a few left to run. I've moved the stick through a total range of motion check and everything is clear plus I've operated the motor through the VP-X system and it function checks good.

Lights Received

I received all the exterior lights. Position lights go in the left wingtip (red), the right wingtip (green) and the tail (white). The strobes are in both wingtips and the tail. The taxi and landing lights will be in each wingtip. This is a position and strobe light combo.

The base is machined out of a solid block of aluminum. Very well made. Red dot means it's got red lights and will go in the left wingtip.

Here is the landing light. Heavy aluminum with big heat sinks. Nice and solid.

Skyview Backup Battery Charging

I edited this post after asking questions on the Dynon blog. I was concerned about damaging my Odyssey PC680 AGM battery with a "dumb" car battery charger. Dynon posted:

It is not an abuse of a lead acid battery, including AGM, to charge it at 14.7V or float it at 13.6V forever. You can actually keep an AGM battery at 13.6V with a power supply all day with no harm.

Your alternator is not a sophisticated charger and your battery will be subjected to that every flight...

Read the Odyssey manual here (page 12):
http://www.odysseybatteries.com/files/techbook.pdf

They also wrote that the backup battery does trickle charge when below 12.25v but extremely slowly. So slowly that it would take weeks to recharge but only an hour or two when above 12.25v. I was also concerned about this quote from the Skyview installation manual:

To conserve your aircraft battery, the SV-BAT-320 is only charged with [sic] SkyView detects your alternator/generator to be online.
 

Turns out that hooking an old 10v car charger to the main battery worked just fine and with Skyview on and the backup battery hooked up, it took about two hours to get the Skyview backup battery up to full charge.

Here's the trickle charger I'm using. Schumacher bought at Walmart for about $18. I leave this running all the time.

It has a pigtail with a quick disconnect that I leave attached to the battery.

ADAHRS Shelf

I finished designing, building and installing the SkyView ADAHRS (Air Data/Attitude/Heading Reference System) shelf. Not a difficult task but it did have to be precisely level and parallel with the aircraft centerline and free from magnetic interference and vibration. The ADAHRS is the non-organic brains of this operation as it measures inertial, magnetic, and air data to drive the Artificial Horizon/Synthetic Vision, Airspeed, Altitude, Vertical Speed, Slip, Turn Rate, Angle of Attack and Gyro-Stabilized Heading.

During construction. The upper inch is angled to mate with the stringers where it attaches to the fuselage.

The ADAHRS will be attached with plastic or brass hardware to prevent magnetic interference. The red plugs on front will be removed to connect the pitot, static and angle of attack lines. The back has the connection to the Skyview network and the OAT (Outside Air Temperature) sensor. I made it wide enough to hold an optional second backup ADAHRS.

Crow Seat Belts

I got my Crow 5-point seat belts yesterday. Only a minor problem but a great customer service response from Crow. I ordered the shoulder harnesses with pads and they came without. I called Crow immediately after I opened the box and Mrs. Crow answered the phone and said they would have the correct shoulder harnesses in the mail today with no charge and don't worry about sending the wrong ones back. Wow, now that's making the customer happy! Should I be worried about Scooter the cat as he likes killing birds?

 

Update: I received the replacement shoulder harnessses with pads. No charge and made it better than right!

 

VP-X Configurator

I've been really excited about getting ship's power through the VP-X and thought I'd show a few pictures of the Configurator. Vertical Power's Configurator is a program that helps you with the settings for the VP-X (electronic circuit breaker system) before it's connected to the EFIS. After you connect the VP-X to the EFIS (electronic flight information system), you can access all the settings directly from the EFIS.

Connecting is easy with the supplied Ethernet cable. Just plug it into the VP-X and then your laptop. This is the screen to connect the two.

The photo of the laptop screen is a little hard to see but this shows the device configuration page for one of the installed components. It's really convenient being able to associate it with any switch you want and change it anytime. For example, I can select anything I want to turn on with the Avionics Master with just a few mouse clicks and NO rewiring!

Here's the list of everything that's powered and how many amps it's drawing. You can see one of the EFIS drawing 2.7 amps and the other drawing 2.6 which is exactly what they should be drawing.

Here's the screen for the flap settings. Very easy and intuitive but with a lot of options. First, it was really easy to wire. Two wires from the single pole switch (On) - Off - (On) into the VP-X and two wires out to the flaps. You don't even have to worry about the polarity as you can reverse it in the VP-X. You can set the flaps to operate when the switch is activated or you can have them go to a specific position with just a blip on the flap switch. You can control the retraction speed plus a bunch of other options. You can even control the flaps directly and bypass the switch via the Move Up and Move Down buttons on the screen.

Wiring at the Firewall

After much thought, I decided to run most of the wires down the firewall and under the center cover (not installed in the picture) like it shows in Van's electrical plans. I know some have had problems with too many wires for the conduit but I can move things later if they don't all fit.

 

Here's the firewall penetration using a stainless pass through covered with orange firesleeve.

We Have Power to the Panel!

Shelby came home Saturday and look what we got done. She was an inspiration in addition to doing some real work. I told her not to tell Mom that I taught her to strip...wire.

It's not the final installation but it sure is nice to see pretty lights on the panel and everything working. On the left side of the screen is the synthetic vision. Synthetic vision is like the GPS you use in your car but on steroids and in 3D. You can see the red towers displayed which are cell phone towers just down the road. They're red because they are below our current elevation. The right side of the screen is the map. It's mostly red because the terrain to the west of us is the hill country which is higher than our current garage level altitude, above which I plan on flying!

The screens are easily changed to display what you want to see. The 50/50 split screen with synthetic vision and map will probably be used most but I can imagine using only map full screen on a clear day or only synthetic vision at night or in the clouds. There is also the right screen with the same ability to display your choice which gives a lot of combinations including a third section that shows aircraft systems information.