Punch List HOBBS 2048.0 hrs

I apologize for not posting for a couple weeks now, I have to admit to being bogged down on getting my wiring done so I can mount the wings. Fear not however, I have been plugging away at it, even though I haven't posted. Lately though, it seems most days I go to the hangar I get there not knowing exactly what to attack next with the wiring. All I see is wires running everywhere and its getting harder and harder to keep track of what I've done and what's left. Bottom line, I haven't had a good game plan. Now, consider that I haven't really had a game plan during the entire four year build and its worked just fine, but for some reason its starting to haunt me now as my head is about to explode. Maybe its because I am so far out of my comfort zone with the wiring...or maybe its the fact that I am nearing the end and all of the last minute items seem overwhelming, or it could be combination of both? When is it going to be done...how close am I? I really don't know?

Whatever the reason, it came to me that it was time to fashion my punch list. I've used punch lists plenty in a former life working for a general contractor in commercial construction, so its an idea I am comfortable with. I was hoping to get through the wiring before I did this, but alas, I needed a jump start and figured this was the ticket. Why did I not do this sooner? Well, I look at it like this...I constantly have a punch list in my head. I have forgotten my name, my address or my gym combination lately, but if you ask whats going on with the airplane...I will give you a 30 minute answer. So, if its in my head, why the change now? I think I just realized...its all up there, but its so disorganized and getting harder to keep track of. Also, a punch list gives me a general idea how to answer all those darn questions of "when is it going to be done?" Everyone told me I would get sick of hearing that as I neared completion...well, I am already there. :) My normal greeting is, "Hi Ron, do you have that airplane done yet?"  In my head I think, "you know I forgot about that...glad you reminded me, I am trying to finish an airplane."  Trust me when I tell ya, there is no one more consumed with the fact than I that I'm not done yet.

So, this week I set down at my computer...not at the hangar mind you, and purely from memory, spit out 104 items that needed to be done before first flight. I thought, wow...all of that was in my little ol' head?? No wonder I cant remember my name! It was also a cold splash to the face...104 items and an estimated 137 more labor hours! That would bring my total to almost 2200 hrs...much more than the 2000-ish I was planning on, which is the reason for me missing on my estimated completion date. Too many custom deviations from plans...they add up in labor hours. 

Bottom line...I have a good two months left before it will fly. I forgot my camera at the hangar, so no pics to share in this post but I'll get ya caught up shortly when I get a minute. I'm off all week for the 4th of July so I should get some good hours logged. Until then, have a good 4th!

Comm Wiring HOBBS 2013.5 hrs

We recently acquired a new temporary guest, Jim Sherry's fine RV8 is parked in our hangar at the moment as he is having a problem with his hangar door. Even though it isn't an RV7, it sure is nice inspiration to see what the heck the end goal looks like! Its nice to crack open the hangar door and see this baby.

It was another big week, hours-wise, for me as I zoomed past 2000 hrs! Wow, 1000 hr thresholds are pretty cool. I have logged nearly 60 hrs the last two weeks combined. Although, unfortunately I cant say I have seen a ton of progress with those hours as I've had to backtrack and redo some things. There is no doubt, the tasks seem to be never ending right now.

My hangar mate, Bill Shook, hung his engine (IO-360 angle valve) by himself...in less than an hour. Nice work Bill, I'm impressed! He has a lot of experience mounting engines in race cars so I'm sure that helped. With Bill and I, the hangar activity is at a high level these days.

I am looking at some schematics that Stein produced for Bill's project (which is very similar to mine and are a great reference) and I started wondering why they show "three" wires going to the headphone jack?? In my SportAir wiring class, we did a complete working headset wire harness and although the microphone had three wires (one for PTT), the headphone side only had TWO...not three! Consequently, that's the way I wired mine.

Well, come to find out...what I wired in the SportAir class was a "mono" headphone setup...not "stereo". Shit! I already had the wires terminated, routed and tie wrapped. Dangit to heck, out they came so I could redo them with three conductor shielded wire.

Problem was, I didn't have enough three conductor shielded wire to redo them. Bill says, I have quite a bit leftover from mine...you are welcome to it. The next day, laying on my HS was this little nugget waiting for me. Dang, that was a huge help not to have to pay shipping and wait! The people in the RV community really are pretty great. He insisted on not letting me pay him either...but I will somehow, shielded wire is not cheap.

Getting wires prepped to be terminated, these are the headphone/microphone wires going to the PAR100EX (my audio panel and second comm). These will terminate in 44 pin, high density D-sub connectors with solder pins. I have now learned, I pretty much hate solder pins...crimp pins are so much nicer and quicker. In fact, one of my pins already broke off when I went to install it, which doesn't give me a warm fuzzy...now I need a special high density extraction tool to get that bugger out...what a pain.

As much as I am working like a dog trying to finish up and avoiding socializing...it can't be all work, work, work. Bill brought it some Elk/chorizo burgers and some chicken with a spicy rub on Sunday that we bbq-ed at the hangar. That pretty much put an end to any productivity on the project for the day, but it was good to visit with the guys and have a few beers.

After we ate...my other hangar mate, Bob Markert, decides he needs to spread his roll bar...now. Basically, with the RV8's, sometimes the welded steel roll bar is not wide enough so it needs to be "adjusted". Bill and Bob pull their trucks around and hook up ratchet straps to the roll bar. And no, they did not use their trucks to pull it...just the straps. I was amazed that we had to go a good 3+" past the desired width to get it to deform...it really sprung back a lot! It was funny to watch all the guys pull up chairs to eagerly watch this adventure unfold!! Luckily no one got hurt. ;)

Interior Lighting HOBBS 1985.5 hrs

Last week was very productive and my biggest 'solo' weekly hours logged so far on the project, with a whopping 30.5 hrs. I'm already on my way to another big week this week. Its taking me longer to finish this thing than I expected, and I am definitely behind where I thought I would be at this point, but it isn't for lack of effort that's for sure.

I ended up redoing some of the center console as I didn't like where I originally mounted my fuel selector. I did another faceplate and move the selector down a little...I like this much better. The black rectangle is where I am considering mounting my aux fuel pump switches.

I looked everywhere for the ELT annunciator panel...finally finding it back at home on my workbench under some stuff. Nothing to mounting this. Its close enough to reach from the pilot seat but also out of the way as much as possible. 

After lots of thinking about wiring in my Aveo switches, I decided I wanted the LED's on (lit up) whenever the panel lighting was on (vs. just coming on when they are switched on). The other dilemma was to wire then in series or in parallel. Bill, my hangar mate did his in series and they look fine...but my circuits training tells me that each LED in series might be dimmer than the last as they act like a resistor?? Not sure if that is correct, but I decided to wire all of my switches to a bus bar which will tie directly to my panel dimmer switch. I like this setup. For the ground wires, I just daisy chained them together...no need for individual grounds on each switch.

I'm starting to wire in my Comm's, i.e., building the harnesses. For the PAR100EX, I needed to solder my molex pins instead of crimping. I had never done this before, and they didn't teach us this in my SportAir class...I guess because most people just crimp? After asking my hangar mate, Bill, I was off and running with a little coaching from him. Basically, you will need some flux to tackle this task. The flux, from what I can tell, allows the solder to flow more evenly. Worked pretty easy. Still learning new stuff every day...

When I get the chance, it really is fun to play around with my interior lighting...good inspiration! After getting all of my lighting terminated properly, I did a test run. This pic shows all of my interior lighting on...full power. As you can see it lights up the cockpit quite bright.

My lighting strategy is this. I originally planned an LED light strip for the glareshield since everyone does that. Two things steered me away from that. One, the carbon fiber aerosport panel doesn't lend itself well to adding a glareshield strip. And two, with the modern EFIS panels these days along with lighted rocker switches, what exactly do I need a glareshield light for?? Nothing that I can tell. So, this is my new layout:

• LED strips on each side panel, these will be controlled with the panel dimmer
• All Aveo LED's will also be controlled with the panel dimmer
• LED floor flood lights (2) in the front cockpit in case you need to find something on the floor...these will have a separate dimmer (#2) as I don't expect these will be on during normal flight
• LED baggage floor flood lights, again, more of a courtesy light--these will be tied to dimmer switch #2 also
• I have a rocker switch to control the baggage dome light
• I have a rocker switch to control the map light

I realize I probably went way overboard, but hey, its cheap, low current draw and negligible weight...so why not? Oh, and its fun. It, no doubt, will look awesome on night flights. The wiring of all these lights is kind of tedious though...that's the downside.

These two pics show my playing around with different dimmer settings. It works great! As you can see, even without a glareshield LED strip, I get plenty of light coming off the side panel LED's to give some light to the panel.

Lastly, here is a video of me playing around with panel dimmer. The pulsing you see in the video is just the camera struggling with the dim light...not the lighting system itself. I ended up working late and spending the night at the hangar one night last week so this was my entertainment for the evening!