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Kitfox Page One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen , Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty
19 April 2014: John McBean sent me photos of how they route wiring under the seat at Kitfox. They use U-shaped aluminum channels. I couldn't find U-channels so I settled for aluminum angles. Yes, those are shot-bag diving weights holding the channels in place while the epoxy cures.
26 April 2014: Mini LED's! Red for the panel and white for the cabin. It's somewhat minimalist but, I can always add more lights if these prove inadequate. I'm considering putting a stiffener on the bracket since it's a little flimsy. The GPS antenna will mount on top of the bracket.
Static Tube: The starboard wire channel is starting to fill.
7 May 2014: A problem. The white static tubing and green pitot tubing are plenty long but, the blue angle of attack tubing is too short. A trip to the computer, a little money, and a longer tube is on the way.
9 May 2014: Back to stringing wire. To test my work I acquired a 12v power supply. ($55 from wallmart.com)
Elevator trim switch. I'm not pushing it in place until everything checks out. To avoid accidentally energizing the trim motor I secured the circuit breaker in the open position.
13 May 2014: Cabin heater wiring. I first attached temporary jumpers in order to test the fans. To my chagrin the fans were blowing upward. Simple, I thought, just reverse the polarity. But that didn't work. I thought about it and concluded that maybe it would be better if the fans pulled air through the radiator and not blow hot air down on our legs. It's a good thing our friends and fellow kitfox builders Ken and Dori Nougaret paid us a visit. I explained all this to Ken and he said, "yeah, but, all that hot air will be blowing against the avionics. "Gee," I said... "hadn't thought of that." ...Next day I flipped the fans over.
Most of the basic wiring is complete. It's on to the avionics.
16 May 2014: If only I had paid more careful attention. I would have noticed that in order to attach the coax fitting to the radio tray it had to be outside the avionics stack. As it was I removed the tray, Installed the fitting, and replaced it in the stack.
The antennas are permanently installed
21 May 2014: Little by little. I take time away from other projects to work on fairing the cowl.
22-23 May 2014: I knew this was coming. Soon after I plumbed the radiator I realized there was going to be a conflict between the port side radiator hose and the air filter. I knew I was going to have to trim the hose to get it out of the way. A little here, a little there, and the problem was solved.
Meanwhile. I take my first steps into the mysteries of avionics. At least I can do most of the work in the air conditioning.
1 June 2014: I know I haven't posted in a while. We were having our kitchen remodeled. I did get a lot of work done on the Kitfox but, I had little time to post it to the website. Stick grips with push to talk buttons and wiring the intercom harness.
4 June 2014: A step back. During the last couple of days I've been increasingly unhappy with my work soldering the 25 pin D-sub connecter for the intercom. Finally it was time to admit defeat. I'm ordering a connecter with crimped pins. Something that agrees with my skill level.
Meanwhile, there's plenty to do. Protective channels for the bottom door sills.
17 June 2014: We took a week off to vacation in the Florida Keys. I'm back and continuing to fair the cowl. I applied cellophane tape (packing tape) to the joint of the lower cowl to prevent Super-Fil from adhering. After filling the gap with Super-Fil it stuck to the top cowl and made a tight joint.
22 June 2014: The Radio/Intercom harness is in place.
26 June 2014: The last few days have been frustrating. The radio works but I can't key the mike. I feel strongly that I've finally found a solution but I put off trying it until tomorrow. I want to sleep on it before giving it a shot. Meanwhile I decided to clean-up the propeller cut-out.
More Super-Fil!
27 June 2014: The "TX" on the top of the display means success. I'm finally transmitting. The solution was painfully obvious. It only took a little short of a week to see that it was thumbing its nose at me. Reading electronic schematics is not one of my strong points.
30 June 2014: The last couple of days have been busy. The transponder wiring is complete. I'll place it in the rack and test it once the EFIS is installed since the EFIS doubles as the altitude encoder. The "steam" gauges are in place as well as the dock for the Garmin 500 GPS. Additionally, the alarm volume control is installed. (Below the ELT annunciator.)
Connecting the Pitot-Static Lines
3 July 2014: The instruments are plumbed. The parts kit from SafeAir made this easy.
Yikes! Just install one wire at a time and, by the next century, It'll be done.
20 July 2014: Yes Yes! I know it's been a while. I've been working at the Stetson Brass Camp. Today I'm back and making progress with the EMS harness. Quite a few of the wires require a resistor to be soldered in line. This took a lot of time at my improvised work station. (Air conditioned!)
Not quite finished but getting there. You can see two round coils. The coil on the right is for the ammeter shunt and will be much more compact when it's hooked up. The coil on the left is all the sensor wires that will not be used and, as a tightly bunched coil, is providing a little support for the 37 pin connector. There are times when I sacrifice neatness for safety. You can see the twisted blue-green wires coiled back and somewhat untidy. This is to guarantee strain relief.
30 July 2014: I accomplished quite a lot since the last post. Since it was all wiring there was not much to photograph. Today I decided to power up the EFIS and the avionics stack. While there is a lot of configuration to do everything seems to work. I left the EMS off because not all sensors are hooked up. Loose wires can cause mischief.
Since the wings are not installed the compass sensor had find home on a table next to the fuselage. I'm happy to say that it works.
1 August 2014: Relocating the oil pressure sender. Left on the engine it's not long for this world. Using a kit purchased from Lockwood I'm relocating it to the firewall. The hose barb has a flow restrictor so that any failure would not result in a rapid loss of oil.
5 August 2014: Oil pressure, fuel pressure, and manifold pressure. All mounted on the firewall. Some may question me about a MP sensor in an airplane with a fixed pitch prop. My only answer is, "The MP sensor was in the bag with the other sensors so, what the hell, put it on."
Exhaust Gas Temperature Sensor: Two, one for each rear cylinder. The installation manual for the EMS stated that the sensors could be placed anywhere between two and eight inches from the cylinders. I decided on 7 inches in spite of the fact that it's a little more distant than what I'm used to. If they work that will be great but, I'm ready to move them if they don't.
The Panel Powered Up: A lot of configuration is needed before everything works as intended..
23 August 2014: Not much work on the kitfox. I'm doing the annual on the Cessna and there are issues. Also I'm changing to different web design software. It may be a while before I'm back. Trust me, though! I will be back.
14 September 2014: Back to work! The relief cut for the nose gear was not large enough but enlarging it would cut completely through the stiffener. So, I took a little foam and fiberglass and made a sister to the original reinforcement.
Meanwhile I'm back to shaping and fairing.
20 September 2014: Bouncing from one task to another keeps my spirits up. Today I took a break from shaping and fairing to get started on enclosing the wing roots.
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