Electrical

	26 May 2005	This is the start of my electrical system. I've pretty much settled on Electric Bob's Z-13, AKA "All Electric Airplane on a Budget". I'm planning an IFR capable panel with a 60A primary alternator, backed up with the SD-8 secondary alternator. I should have one side electric ignition (model unknown) and only one battery. I'm in the middle of performing load analysis and I hope to put that up here as well. After the load analysis is complete, I'll start on the system wiring drawings.
	17 Feb 2006	I've uploaded my electrical loads analysis (in excel). If anyone cares to take a look, let me know if there's any problems. I'm planning on dual alternators, so the spreadsheet is set up for Normal Ops, Main ALT Fail, and BATT Only. So far from what I can see the numbers seem to work out.
	7 Mar 2006	I think I exceeded my daily spending limit. Switches and a whole bunch of electrical stuff were ordered. I ordered some fuse blocks from Affordable Panels and the rest of the stuff from B&C including the really expensive external LR-3 voltage regulator. I still need some things but I have the bulk of the junk so I can start figuring out where I'm putting all this.
	1 Apr 2006	Fitted the starter and battery relay to the firewall. I was dinking around with the battery mount so I figured I'd go ahead and temp fit these two components.
Pic TBD	2 Sep 2006	Although I haven't really started the wiring phase, I did order and receive the master kit from Stein Air, minus some tools I already had. I also ordered and received a cool Kroy printer that will print a thermal marking on shrink tubing. This should work well for all the wiring markers.
	7 Oct 2006	I started trying to figure out where all the stuff is going go. The electrical tray is going to work out great and provides a fair amount of room for all the electrical doo-dads. I have three fuseblocks (batt, e-buss, and main), the capacitor and volt regulator for the SD-8 standby alternator, the main volt regulator, and a place-holder for the GRT AHRS.I still need to find a home for the lighting regulator.
		The battery and starter relays went back on the firewall for further fitting and seemed to fit OK. I also started the fabrication of the brass bars to connect to two.
		And finally the firewall ground block is temp fitted. The other side of this is the cabin ground block. Thinking about the order of things, I can't bolt on the battery box until the f/w recess is in. I don't want to do that until I cut the holes for the heater valve. So after the heater valve goes in, then the recess get's sealed and riveted, then I can finalize the electrical components and install the tray. But I need to think about where the main wire bundles are going to come up from the floor.
	14 Oct 2006	The component mounting continues. I fab'd and riveted mount for the current limiters just below the battery box. The Z-13 diagram call for two of these, one for each system (primary and backup).
		Mounted current limiters and I believe this worked out well. Next steps are to rivet the firewall recess, polish the firewall a bit, then all the components go on for good. I also received the Odyssey PC680 battery from Sunn Battery this week. Great service from those folks. Follow-up note: I think I read the Z-13 wrong. I don't need two ANLs. I'll check to see if I can use a 10A ANL rather than a fusable link so this isn't wasted.
	16 Oct 2006	I went back and revisited my initial electrical loads calculations. I had some questions and asked a couple on the Aerolectric matronics, and based on that, revised the loads. Not that the load was much different, I basically re-distributed the loads from the Battery Buss to the Main and E-Buss. If you want to check out the loads, here's the excel sheet. I have one tab for normal ops and one for Main ALT failed: electrical loads analysis (in excel).
	21 Oct 2006	I took the tray out to get to the brake lines and install the recess, but while it's out, the components are going to get located and installed. I'm still dinking around with where I want to put all this stuff, but it's close. I'm also waiting on the GRT AHRS before drilling all this.
		Here's the components for the stand-by SD-8 alternator and I've located them on the right forward panel rib just aft of the firewall. I've drilled for nutplates but I need to install them. All the major electrical components will be accessible through the access panels in the forward skin.
	22 Oct 2006	I had a 150W soldering gun but it just wouldn't touch the battery cable. Down to the local HD for a small butane torch. Worked like a charm. This is the first end and I need to figure out the length before I cut and solder the other end.
	24 Oct 2006	Got the ground line soldered but now I need to see if I can get the rubber terminal cover over the terminal ends. Oops, hate when I forget these things.
		Cables temp. installed on the firewall. Looks like it's going to work. I did have to send in an order to SteinAir for the #8 wire for the main buss. Things are starting to come together.
	28 Oct 2006	Not a big deal, but here's the NAV antenna coupler. I'll bring one cable in from the wing and split the NAV signal for short runs to the GNS480 and SL-30.
		And here's the location for the interior light controller. I hated to mount this on the sub-panel as I'm trying to keep this as clean as possible, but it just wasn't going to fit on the electronics tray or the the left panel rib, sooooo...that's where it ended up. I plan on running radio lights, a panel flood, and left and right map lights from here.
	1 Nov 2006	Received some #8AWG and 5-strand autopilot wire from SteinAir today as well as some boots for the battery cables.
	4 Nov 2006	Been working the placement of the electrical components which I've finally finalized. The placement gives me enough room for a big hole in the electronics tray to run cables down the side of the heater cover.
	5 Nov 2006	And here's the final electrical tray. I've lightened it up a little and installed nutplates for the various components.
	17 Nov 2006	The forward electrical tray seemed like a good idea so I thought I'd do the same for the mid-fuselage. The plan is to run one power feed to the fuseblock for the trim components and then bring all the grounds together and run a larger wire back to the firewall ground farm. This is going to reduce the number of wires going into the aft fuselage from the forward area by about 10-15 wires. SteinAir has gotten a lot of orders lately as it seems there's always something I've forgotten. Today was a couple terminal strips, a fuse block and some minor other stuff as well as a Gretz Pitot as I need to components for the panel and electrical. For the most part I have all the components for wiring right now.
	26 Nov 2006	I spent a fair amount of time on the aft electrical tray (got that drilled and painted), then started looking at running some of the wires from the battery -> Batt Buss, and from the switched side of the battery contactor. Downside was that I didn't have the right terminals for the main lead to the E-Buss. Also needed some AWG12 wire so I made the weekly order with Aircraft Spruce. I should have this stuff by late this week so I can make some further progress.
	2 Dec 2006	It's been quite the November here in the Northwest. Record setting low temps, rainfall, and a little snow and ice thrown in for good luck. I know, you guys in the Midwest and Northeast are just laughing your rear's off. Yup, we're pretty wimpy when it comes to snow. Progress is being made on teh electrical system. The forward e-tray was screwed in and the components attached. Here's a good view of where everything is going to go.
		The trick is to figure out where to route the wires. This looks to be the prefered routing for the right side and inlcudes a firewall hole for the primary power supply wires as well as the SD-8 feeds.
		I And this is what the firewall looks like right now. The coiled lines are for the SD-8 standby alternator.
		A Kroy K3100-PC printer is going to save a ton of time printing labels for the wires. It connects directly to my PC and then using Word or the freeware, you can create any label you want. The cool thing is that it prints directly on .125 shrink tube and comes in either black on yellow, or black on white tubing. I went with the black on yellow so I could find the labels.
		I This is the aft e-tray with the components attached. I have a small fuse block for the trim system. One of the terminal strips is going to serve as a common ground point for a lot of the mid-fuselage stuff so I can just run a bigger wire to the firewall ground instead of having a lot of smaller wires. Finally, there are the RAC relays and speed control for the trim.
	9 Dec 2006	I was back into the wiring a bit and working with the standby alternator components. There's some discrepancy between the Z-13 diagram and the SD-8 power distribution diagram that comes with the OVM-14 kit. I need to ask Bob what the difference is. Other than that, I'm in the middle of figuring out wiring runs, installing hole bushings, and locating adel clamps. Supposedly, the GRT stuff should ship soon (were scheduled for 12/2) as they we waiting on the AHRS. Oh well, there's a lot to do otherwise.
	20 Dec 2006	Bob did get a response back to the question on the Z-13 vs. the SD-8 diagrams and the answer was to wire it up per the Z-13. Great, so I've been re-working the SD-8/ Alt Volt Regulator wiring for now. Once again, I need a spade connector that I don't have. Back to Digikey. At least they ship quick and I usually have items within a couple days. Once all the ALT Alt. stuff is wired, I'll finish up the rest of the power management. Then it's on to the individual components.
	30 Dec 2006	The main DC architecture is pretty much complete at this time and includes the components for the SD-8 stand-by alt and it's about time to launch off on wiring up all the switches. The amber low volt warning light comes on as advertised with the main buss energized and the field lead seems to get the appropriate voltage when ON. Very cool. So far, everything appears to be working as advertised. The switches are going to be fairly easy, it's the integration of the GRTs with the Garmin stuff that's going to be a challenge. I was planning on putting the transponder antenna on the floor up against the firewall, but after measuring the distance to the unit (2.5'), it looks like it's going to go in the aft fuselage.
	6 Jan 2007	I was able to make some decent progress today, but after spending 4 hours looking at 22 AWG all day, my eyes are shot and the back to done. I finished soldering up the LC-40 dimmer pots today, but to do this, I drilled appropriate holes in a scrap piece of metal, then wired them up. It was going to be way to tedious on the panel itself. Anyway, here's the pots all wired up.
		Next step was to temp install the lighting dimmer pots, then solder the co-pilot's PTT. I decided to put it on the panel so I can keep the CP stick easily removable.
		Finally, I located the mic and stereo headset jacks. I was short on the Stark pig-tail length to put them aft of the seats, so I settle on this location, right about where the knees go. It's out of the way, and eliminates the cable runs to the aft fuselage. No problem. The co-pilot's jacks are in and the headphone for the pilot, I just need to finish up the mic jack on the pilots side then this is done.
	13Jan 2007	It doesn't look like much but there was a bunch of progress today. I spent about 6 hours in the shop and accomplished a lot of wiring. Notice that both the Main (top right) and Essential Buss' (lower fuse block) are starting to fill up. I wired up most of the buss-to-switches for Taxi, LND, NAV, and strobe lights, connected the EI strip and inverter to the LC-40 and verified it works, and ran GND and power for SL-30, CNX-480, and GTX-327. What's missing in this picture is the the GRT AHRS which goes on the tray just below the volt reg. I'm just doing most of the wiring before sticking this in.
		I also ran wire to the mid fuse area after finally figuring out the best routing. Overall, not as bad as I thought. I ran strobe power pac, TAXI, LND, and NAV lighting wires, as well as trim fuse block power. Although there's a zillion wires in this thing, it seems to be going pretty quick. I'm pretty much ready to check power to radio stack at this time.
	17Jan 2007	Pics just aren't that interesting at this point as all they'll show is a lot of wires, bad crimps, and tails from zip ties. I've been spending about an hour a night in the shop, doing about 3 or 4 wires a session. The mid-fuselage runs are coming along and I've started running coax as well. Hopefully, I have enough room in the spar holes for all these wires and I'm close to running all that's needed through that area. With any luck, I'll get this done by the end of March when I expect to have an engine show up.
	21Jan 2007	Although a fairly short 4 hour day on the RV, I got a couple things done. Here's the current status of the forward electronics bay looks like. The majority of the fuses are wired and coax cables are being installed. The AHRS is time fitted to the right but I need to level, then screw that to the tray. Going along, I've been trying to keep the wiring as neat as possible, which means using scads of the small zip ties.
		For lack of a better place to run the fuel level float senders, I figure I'll put a small hole somewhere near the fuel line b-nut but I'm not quite sure where. This is something that can wait. I did run the wire up the vent line route which seemed to work.
		And from the back, you get an idea what this looks like. From the left, I have the left comm antenna and doubler installed (just need to put the connector on the coax) and the 1/4" pitot line is temp fitted as well and runs up the upright forward of the spar (seems to tuck into the aft side fairly well). There are lots of zip tie tails all over the place as well as other wire refuse. For some reason, wiring is up there next to fiberglass work with the amount of stuff that gets all over the place. I did manage to get the flap switch wired and at this time, most of the wires that are going to run through the spar are already there. I think I'm only missing a couple smaller wires and the autopilot 7-strand cables. I also need to run the NAV antenna coax to the right side but I do have room for that.
	28 Jan 2007	Finally had a nice weekend weather-wise, so after a long wait, I was able to go out and spend 45 minutes in the pattern doing touch & goes (much needed) before it got a little cold. Over the weekend I managed to get some more wiring done. The mid-fuse tray is now installed and about 3/4 of the wires are now connected to the tray including the trim relays, roll servo, trim speed servo, pilot's PTT and MIC LO wires, AP disconnect, various ground, and the trim fuse feed. When the switches for the stick get here I can get that wired up to the mid-fuse tray as well. I did start running the cables to the rear of the fuselage so I can get that out of the way. It's finally feeling like this is somewhat under control. After the basics get finished in the next week or so, it's on to the GRT - Garmin - AP integration wiring.