Pitot-static-AOA system routed in airframe

First, the diagram of what's needed for my panel design.

It turns out that the wire clips under the seats are not large enough to house the wiring to the wings and the pitot-AOA lines, in the case of the left wing.  So I had to drill through some of the seat ribs to route those lines.

I marked the route I wanted then used the pneumatic angle drill to start the holes with a #40 bit, then upsizing to a #30.

Then I used my electric hand drill with a right angle drill attachment and 1/4" drive unibit set to upsize each hole to their final 3/8" size so that a SB-374-4 snap bushing could fit.

The final routing for the left pitot (green) and AOA (blue) lines from the rear bulkhead to the wing root is shown below.

The air lines are from Coilhose Pneumatics NC0440, 11/64" I.D., 1/4" OD, 0.04 wall thickness.  I originally purchased these for my Dynon heated pitot/AOA from Avery Tools back on 22-Aug-13 under the SafeAir1 name, however it is now available for much cheaper from MSC Direct and other sources.

Also, the push-to-connect fittings are from MettleAir.  These are much less expensive than the SafeAir1 branded fittings available elsewhere.  I found the MettleAir fittings on Amazon.  They incorporate an NBR o-ring and stainless lock claws.  Each image below links to Amazon.

My TruTrak ADI2 requires a pitot connection.  Per my diagram above, it uses the right pitot so that it is independent of the EFIS' left pitot.  Below is that connection.  TruTrak specifies that the static connection remain unconnected in unpressurized aircraft.  So the other port on the block remains unused.

The GRT AHRS gets left pitot, AOA and static connections.  If you look closely, my lines come in at a slight angle to each port.  I was originally concerned about that.  However there are no apparent leaks even when shaking the lines.

The Winter 7 FMS 523 ASI and Winter 4 FGH 50 ALT both get static whilst the former additionally gets right pitot.  These instruments were added to provide an independent and non-electric means of airspeed and altitude indications.  The ASI, using the right pitot, provides a redundant indication should the left pitot get blocked.  You'll notice I didn't use red tubing into the winter ALT after the elbow.  For whatever reason, the barb on the pitot port was not beveled, so I just couldn't get the red tube on.  Yet the white tube was more malleable and accommodating to its fitment.

Here are images showing the tee'ing of the lines as they come up from the tunnel.  Left pitot and AOA tees (left), static tee (center) and right pitot tee (right).

The system appears to hold air for at least 5 minutes in all lines.  I will test it more formally later.

A later post will outline the tribulations of my wiring endeavor, some of the details of which are rather prominent in the images on this post.

Finish: Tricycle Landing Gear and Wheel Fairings.

I probably did about 10% of the work on these.  My RV-9A friend did the vast majority for me whilst I contorted about through the airframe pushing around wires.  Below is the final result.



Now, how to make that happen...

The gear leg fairings halves are fitted to each other, sanding and cutting where necessary to get them aligned and to accommodate the gear leg (right main wheel fairing on left, nose fairing on right).

I cut out the hole for the main gear leg.

Then I attached the U-00002 Wheel Fairing Brackets following match drilling into the fairings proper.

My friend went about further alignment and subsequent sanding, cutting and fitting.

Eventually the fit is acceptable.

Next, the plans call for adding flox mixture around the Wheel Fairing Brackets to fill the space between the main gear fairing's curved surface and that of the flat surface around the brackets.  It also provides for additional stability. Thankfully, no one will see this ugly mess but me.

Next come the gear leg and intersection fairings which my friend completed.

Apparently, other Van's models have the builder bond the U-01411-L/R Lower Intersection Fairing to the wheel fairing and then cut the intersection fairing so that the entire assembly comes on and off together.  The plans do not instruct -14 builders to do the same.  I liked the notion of fewer screws and parts to manage, so I chose to follow the previous models' approach.  My friend did this work.

I cut the gear leg hole far too long on one of the gear fairings.  It was simple enough to re-bond the part in place.  You can also see how the intersection fairing was attached by my friend.

And finally, the fairings are nearly completed.  The addition of some tinnerman washers and perhaps a little more sanding are in order.

Many thanks to my friend for busting through the vast majority of these fairings over about 1.5 weeks.

Wiring: Aiframe Harnesses

Update 12-Sep-16:  Since I've had some questions about this, I wanted to clarify:  My left tail harness pinouts are the same as the one provided in the kit except for the trim power wires (pins 6 and 8).  The kit puts those on the right tail harness and keeps pins 6 and 8 open on the left side.  For the wings, only my 9 pin connector pinouts match those of the kit's.  My other wing connectors do not (the 12- and 6-pin).

To assemble the wiring harnesses, I first mapped out what I wanted in each connector.  Again, I believe wiring diagrams are too difficult to be read by humans.  I instead created what I call a "wiring map", which shows what lives in each connector's pin.  Circles indicate wire colors.  Dashed lines demarcate the corresponding instrument/device the wiring belongs too.  Examples of my wiring maps for avionics can be found in here.

This is the left tail harness.  It accommodates the ELT, pitch trim and nav/strobe light.  It uses a 12-pin Molex connector 0003092121 with male pins 0002092118 (18-22 AWG) and 0002092103 (14-20 AWG).  Though Van's original layout calls for the trim servo power wires to be on the right side tail harness (to accommodate Dynon and Garmin autopilot wiring), I placed them on the left side harness since I'm using GRT avionics.  My right side harness only contains the GRT autopilot pitch servo wires and is not shown.

Down below is the wiring for the wing harnesses.  Again, I departed from the Van's layout to accommodate my unique avionics setup.  The left wing has two harnesses and the right has three, the third for the autopilot roll servo.  

The left and right wings both have resistive fuel floats, landing and nav/strobe lights so one of their harnesses share the same layout.  That harness uses a 9-pin Molex 0003091094 with female pins 000209119 (18-22 AWG) and 0002091104 (14-20 AWG).  

Though both wings have capacitive fuel indicators and low fuel indicators, the left side has the stall warner, heated pitot and OAT sensor whilst the right side has both the roll trim (though I have not installed the roll trim, I included the wiring for it should it be installed later) and autopilot roll servo (the latter necessitating a third harness for the right wing).  So these remaining harness layouts differ.  They use the same 12-pin connectors and pins as the tail harness above and the autopilot roll servo uses the 6-pin Molex 0003091064 and 003092062 with the same female pins and male pins as the above.

Here are all the wires cut to size and laid out in a column for each harness, with their connectors (the roll servo harness wires are not shown).  Tail wires were cut to 12 feet.  Wing wires to 10 feet.

Below left, the pins are crimped, soldered and placed in the connector housing.  It's important to label the socket for each pin so as to reduce mistakes, lest you need the pin removal tool.

Below right, the tail harness wires are lined up and ready to slide into their 1/8" PET Expandable Braided Sleeving.  Sorry for the poor image, it was difficult to capture the subjects.  The sleeving is the black line on the right.  The chair in the background was used to hold down the harness whilst negotiating the sleeving onto the wires.  The roll in the foreground holding down the wires kept the assembly from coiling back up.

The completed tail harness.

The completed wing harnesses.  The right wing is the column on the left and vice versa.

Avionics/Panel: Lit up in airframe.

After spending 20+ hours routing wires and connecting them in the airframe, I hooked up the panel to some juice and fired the bad boy up.  Though the EIS, switches and indicators are not yet wired up, the whole shebang still looks like a party.

I have at least 20 hours of wiring remaining before it's done as I need to fashion the wing and tail harnesses and tidy the mess up.

You can read a reverse-chronology of my panel design and construction.  After learning what the cost is to have a panel professionally designed, built and wired, I opted to do the whole thing myself.

Finish: Canopy and Window. Canopy fairing complete.

After some additional work, the canopy fairing is essentially complete.  Go here to read about the entire process of assembling the window.

You can see the wheel fairings in the above picture.  Those are complete and a forthcoming post will outline my experience as I'm waiting to finish the leg and intersection fairings before posting.