May 2010

03.05.2010: I am back in Europe and back on the project. Even though I enjoyed the three weeks in sunny Florida I am happy to be able to work on the project again. I really want to finish the plane in May.

The first thing that happened today, however, is hard to believe. Kuerzi Avionics, the avionics company next to our maintenance workshop, had a customer coming with his Europa kitplane (on a trailer) to perform the last tests required before the first flight (transponder test, compass calibration etc.). The call sign of the plane is HB-YNK, which is right next to mine (HB-YNL). When I heard the name of the builder it sounded familiar, when I saw him I realised that we had studied together Electrical Engineering for a year nearly 30 years ago! What a way to meet again after such a long time.

We had of course a lengthy discussion about kitbuilding, and all the rest that happened in 30 years.

I then continued with the wiring.

05.05.2010: More wiring today.

06.05.2010: And the same again today. I am slowly making progress, but it is amazing how many cables go into such a small plane.

07.05.2010: More wiring today. I also had to do some work for the CAMO of our club, as well as make an update to the MOE of our maintenance workshop, which kept me busy half of the day.

10.05.2010: All cables are now nicely bundled, I just have to finish adding some connectors as well as hooking up all the ground leads to the ground bar.

In the meantime Rolf mad a nice plate to attach the air filter. We did not like the standard way of mounting it as defined in the kit, so we designed our own version. I have seen that other builders did the same.

I will be off again for the rest of the week, that will allow me to finish the schematics, as well as some other paperwork. I expect to start powering up the electrical system next week.

14.05.2010: I am still in Florida. All those business trips can sometimes be quite tiring, especially the short ones, as you usually don't have time to do anything besides working, driving taxis, waiting in lounges, sitting in planes etc. Today I had however the once in a lifetime chance to go and see the launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis! My return flight from Orlando was at 8 pm, and the launch was scheduled for 2:20 pm, and the Cape is only an hour away from Orlando so I left the office early and drove to Titusville. I checked on the internet and everybody seems to agree that that's the best spot to watch a launch.

Here a view at the Vertical Assembly Building from around 10 miles away.

There was a huge crowd, they say now that the program slowly comes to an end (there are only two more launches left) the public interest has again grown significantly.

And here it comes. It is amazing how the fire of the engines is much longer than the shuttle itself.

It takes around 45 seconds from the start of the launch till the noise can be heard. It's just amazing to watch.

Here a more detailed view, I wonder whether they also have EXPERIMENTAL written on it.

Here an attempt to blow up a picture so that once can see the solid propellant booster moving away from the shuttle.

According to the radio there were around 9'000 spectators watching.

Whoever has a chance to go and see one of the two remaining launches should take it, it is truly an awesome sight.

14.05.2010: I am back in Europe, tomorrow I will continue with my wiring saga. I went to the airport this afternoon to show my kit to a visitor and saw that the Club's SportCruiser has arrived.

17.05.2010: I am back from Florida and fully in the wiring again. Rolf made a small circuit board onto which all the small fuses go, as well as all the pull up resistors for the sensors and the voltage regulator for the adjustment of the instrument lighting. That gives a cleaner wiring, but also more work..

18.05.2010: Wiring again, but I slowly see the light at the end of the tunnel. Rolf made a new bracket to mount the water radiator, as it touched the cowling when using the factory supplied one. The new one is much better, we now have sufficient clearance against the cowling, the engine, exhaust pipes and the oil filter. I noticed on the factory built plane that the spacer onto which the propeller is mounted is 65 mm thick, where else the one we got is only 35 mm, they probably found out too that the room around the radiator is a bit tight. For the club plane we ordered the ground adjustable Sensenich propeller too, as we did not want an adjustable pitch propeller (we are renting the plane to very low time pilots). I saw at Sun & Fun that Sensenich now make a three blade version, I think I would probably use that one now as they claim it is even quieter and also gives more ground clearance.

20.05.2010: Today we more or less finished the wiring! I am still missing the cable to the Garmin 695 GPS, but I can add that one later.

Tomorrow we can start powering up everything, I hope we won't find too many errors... It doesn't look too bad however, as we finished with all the ground connections and in the end it everything matched the schematics. We will see. What I will then also have to do is to configure all the devices, upload the newest Dynon software onto everything etc.

I also have to decide where to put the registration onto the fuselage, as I got the new stickers yesterday. I had some made by Czech Sport Aircraft, but they where 30 cm tall, like the ones on the plane pictured above (HB-WYC). We later found out that we only need some that are 20 cm, and as the bigger ones hardly fit and therefore really don't look nice (just out of proportion), Silvan decided to have new ones made for the clubs plane. I told him to make some smaller ones for me too.

I had a look at a number of pictures on "Sportcruisers on Tour", a website that has pictures of many of the SportCruisers flying around the world. From that I found out that it really look the nicest when the registration is parallel to the horizontal line of rivets on the side of the fuselage, regardless of the paint scheme.

The paint scheme does however play a role when deciding how high on the fuselage the registration should be and how far behind the canopy. For that I put the stickers temporarily to a number of positions and then took a photo of each version. The result is the following:

I will probably go for the second one, or the second last in the row, but I will first try the other side too. In case somebody wonders, we have to put a small Swiss flag onto the stabiliser too, as the HB- registration is used for planes form both Switzerland and Lichtenstein. That small flag is part of the official registration, and of course specified in detail by the Swiss Office of Civil Aviation. We also have to write EXPERIMENTAL on both sides of the fuselage, and again that is specified in detail (30 mm tall lettering, all capitals, line width 1/6th of the height of the letters etc. etc....).

20.05.2010: Yes, we more or less finished the wiring today! There are only a few items open, such as hooking up the Garmin GPSMAP 695 (we are still missing the special cable), adding two potentiometers to control the HS34 audio level as well as the lighting brightness, and add the rear position / strobe light, but we could non the less start powering up the whole thing.

We used as smaller external battery that we hooked up to the external power receptacle and added an external circuit breaker between that battery and the plane as added protection. I also disconnected the power lead going to the starter to prevent the propeller from turning accidentally. I then first checked whether the 12 V reach the main switch and then activated it to see whether those items that are directly powered from the main bus bar (through circuit breakers of course) work (flap motor, flap indicator, trim etc.). They did without any problems, so I continued with the instruments switch. That one did not work as expected, instead of the Dynons the FLARM started up. I found out that I had crossed out the "Instruments" and the "Avionics" switches, so that could also be connected fairly quickly.

After that everything worked fine except that two of the indicators on the panel that warn that the canopy is not locked, respectively the flaps are not fully retracted, were crossed out too. That is also easy to correct, I can just swap the two lead that go to the respective switches. I then started with the GNS430W and the GTX330, and the powered up fine. What does not yet work is the audio system. I can't hear anything in the headset, so there might be another small error or I first have to configure them. I will read the manuals and check the schematics over the weekend to see what it could be. Otherwise the units seem to work fine. If I press the PTT switch on either stick the radio transmits, if it receives a signal from another radio this is shown on the display too.

Here a picture of me during testing....

...as well as one from the panel under power. The GPSMAP 695 is not yet installed, it will be in the centre of the panel.

For those who wonder, there are seven indicator lights above the EFIS. The red ones are urgent warnings, respectively warnings that shall not persist for a longer time and require immediate attention (EMS Warning, Starter Engaged, Canopy Open), the yellow one requires attention within reasonable time (Alternator Failure) and the green ones are just for information (Fuel Pump On, Pitot Heat On and Flaps Extended).

The switches are organised in a way from left to right that represents the startup / flight procedure. They are Main, Instruments, Avionics, Strobe Lights, Nav Lights, which are activated in this sequence and always on during flight, and then Landing Lights, Taxi Light, Instruments Lighting, Pitot Heat and Fuel Pump, which are all used only during certain phases of a flight. The two circuit breakers on the pilot side are for the trim motors, respectively the autopilot servos, and can be pulled in case there are any problems with the servos. All other circuit breakers are on the passenger side.

21.05.2010: I went fast to the airport to check whether I hear something in the headset if I connect my iPod to the audio input, and I do. That means that the intercom works, so it might be that I have crossed out the audio in- and outputs between the GNS430 and the intercom. I will check that next week. I will also have to update the Dynons to the newest software release and then configure everything.

26.05.2010: Today I updated all the Dynon units to the latest software release. Everything went smoothly, except that I had to update the EFIS twice. In the first pass only the EFIS was updated and not the autopilot, probably due to the old software not supporting the autopilot at all. During the second update the autopilot and the servos were updated too. A first check showed that everything works, including the autopilot. There is quite a smart autopilot setup routine that asks you to move the stick to the four maximum positions (down left, down right etc.), from which it detects which servo does what (aileron respectively elevator), what the direction of movement is and the maximum travel. That's really easy, you don't have to worry about any of this during installation.

I also hooked everything up to the main battery, as the small one we used so far just does not deliver sufficient power once everything is running. I disconnected the lead to the starter, however, just as a protection. I also noticed that a cover over the + battery connection is really needed, and that care is required when tightening the battery connection screw to prevent producing a short circuit towards ground.

27.05.2010: Today we installed the horizontal stabilizer and the elevator. We also continued with the configuration of all the electronics.

28.05.2010: We finally found the problem with the radio! We had an error in the wiring (due to counting the pin sequence from the wrong side on the lower row of the 25 Pin Sub-D connector on the GNS430), which left the audio output low signal unconnected, instead of connecting it to ground. That meant that the audio output high was "floating", which resulted in a much too low signal level. After correcting the error the radio worked well. I also finished configuring the Dynon HS34, to which the GNS430 connects, so now the GNS 430 GPS as well as NAV outputs appear on the HSI on the EFIS. Cool, even the three (!) airline captains that had a look at it today were all impressed (and they are all flying Airbus A320's).

I also finished configuring the Dynon-180 EMS, so now all sensors show values that make sense. The next step will be to run the engine!

Next we finally put the call sign on the fuselage. Silvan's advice to go for italic characters, as well as make them anthracite instead of black was definitely worth it, it looks much softer that standard black characters. Here a picture of the fuselage...

...and a closer look at the call sign.

We had lengthy discussions on where to put the little Swiss flag (which is mandatory), and finally put it more or less in the middle of the vertical stabilizer (see below). Both the call signs and the flags are 3M stickers made by a local print shop. They are easy to apply, durable, but can also be removed without traces. I have a set of "NO PUSH", "NO STEP" etc. stickers already, but I might have them made again in the same anthracite colour, just because it looks nice.

In the afternoon Urs came to Lommis to have a sun shade installed in his SportCruiser, with the result that we had three three of them in our shop.

30.05.2010: I just had an hour today, so I went to check for all the placards I need by taking pictures from the factory built example. I also took a picture of the cover we made for the shunt resistor that measures the electric current. The shunt is quite exposed, risking a short circuit when using e.g a screw driver under the panel, so we decided to make a cover to prevent this. I later discovered that the factory built planes now have a similar cover.

The cables are not yet fully tied together, but I can do that next once I have finished testing the electrical system.

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