Dec 2007    20.0 hours

Well I had to change gears due to the cooler weather of the fall.  I was afraid of the cold causing a problem with the canopy so I stopped work and put the windscreen on the shelf until the warm weather returns.  Until then I am working on the wiring.  This is the part I have been waiting for on this project.  I really enjoy the high tech gadgetry and am really looking forward to integrating all the instruments.  I spent a huge amount of time learning about the smart design of the electrical system.  Now I get to finally build it and find out just how much I still have to learn.  The learning curve is very steep and as always there is lots of help on the internet.  I have changed my format a bit as I begin the wiring process.  I will not make as many posts because sometimes many hours of work yields very little in exciting pictures.

With all that said here is what I have accomplished so far.  I spent a bunch of time checking out my previous work on the battery to the fuseblocks.  Once I was satisfied with that I began installing the radio harnesses.  These were built by Tony Skalan at Stark Avionics and are excellent quality.  I installed them on the radio trays but I first had to add a few more pins on the audio panel d-sub connectors.  Once that was done I began running all the grounds and power leads for the radios.  I won't apply power to the radios until I have the antennas plugged in.  Not sure when that will be.  I then moved on to the GRT Horizon 1 EFIS.  I have a dual screen system with 1 AHRS and the GRT Engine Instrument System (EIS).  A huge part of wiring is not just what wires are connected together but rather where to physically locate the wires.  Once that was decided I started tying wire bundles with wire lacing cord.  I am now very good at tying knots!  Finally the big moment came and I applied power to the EFIS and everything came up without any smoke!  I have spent a few hours just watching the demos and playing with the settings to get the MFDs to "talk" to each other and learning the various functions.  I now need to move on an continue the wiring.

The spaghetti wiring mess!	The fold down fuseblocks
Where do all these wires go?	The EFIS cabling
Power is applied !!	The EFIS and EIS

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