Twisted: Week 207 - Electrics Cont.

Hours to date: 1933.0

As you will see below I'm getting on with the electrics.

In fact there is not much more to do other than the fuel flow and a tidy up in some areas.

I'm still trying to figure out the fuel flow set up as things were not clear from the manufacturer of the 'Red Cube' FT60 fuel flow transducer.

After contacting the factory direct it does seem that I was right all along to install 2 transducers (even though their literature disagreed with this). However I also need to buy a small module that takes the readings from each transducer and works out the difference before sending that information to the Dynon D180. This is because with the UL engine we have a return line and most of the fuel travelling through the system has not been burned up each time it passes the transducers.

Make sure you include a big ground lead from the case of the Dynon to your master ground as the Dynon needs this to work correctly.

After what seemed like hours I finally got the harness sorted through the firewall and fixed the firewall protection plate (I'd previously made up out of stainless steel) in place. Quite a confined space to work in both sides of the firewall but we got there in the end. The white goo is from the other passthrough kit and makes a fireproof airtight seal. As you can see I used a piece of firesleeve to wrap the harness before doing this.

I noted that Pete doesn't do anything here and has a big gap around his wiring harness which means that his firewall is not truly a firewall! No wonder he had smoke coming in the cockpit when his alternator cooling fan failed.

I finally got the top panel in yesterday and have switched a few things on. The Dynon, GPS, Radio and Transponder - which all work okay. The only thing that isn't working at the moment is the Push to Talk for the radio - so I'm trying to trouble shoot that now. The power for the iPad also works fine.

The Dynon is going to take a lot of configuring but I have made a start. All the temp gauges are accurate so far, reading ambient temperature and agreeing with one another. The sensors must be configured as they will almost certainly be set up wrong in the Dynon as default sensors. I noticed my oil pressure was reading 85psi but after I had configured the sensor correctly it dropped to zero.

With the fuel sender electric connection on the wings I've gone for the same set up as Pete, which is an automatic connecting device when the wings go on. The wing part of which needs to exactly align for it to work, so I've made a small plate out of carbon which I will bond to the wing when I put them on next. This way the wing part of the connection will be in the perfect position. A trough needs to be made into the wing root around the area where this plate will bond. All of that I will do when I get the wings on next time.

When I've finished all the electrics and hopefully the weather improves then I will switch back to the flap drive job which I got part way through last year.