Joshua's RV-9A Project

I’m trying to close out wiring and stuff aft of the center section, so that the wiring runs in the tunnel can be cleaned up and tied down, then work forward with the wiring.  To that end, I finished running all the wires I could aft of the center section, which today was the ELT remote (4-22 shielded) and the GPS signal run (3-22 shielded) which will feed both the ELT and the APRS tracker that I’ll mount in the same area.  That finishes the aft wiring, except for five wires: 4 audio cables (pilot & pax headset & mic runs), and the cable(s) to the magnetometer(s) — I’ll run wires for 2, since each screen with airdata needs it’s own magnetometer — all of which will be included in the harness kits from SteinAir, so I’m waiting to run those.

With most of the wiring aft of the firewall in place for the time being (until the harnesses are ready in a few weeks), I moved on to other aft-of-the-spar tasks — namely, the control system.  I removed, primed, and reinstalled the pushrod that connects the two sticks in the roll axis, and built the forward elevator pushrod, as well as bent and installed the tabs that bolt onto the control column to connect the roll trim springs.  I used a piece of light safety wire to thread the washers and rod ends into the sticks properly, but still need to torque those bolts.

I finally got around to some housekeeping — vacuumed out the forward part of the cabin of metal shavings and debris.  I need to reclaim my shop vac from the office and vacuum out under the seat pans, as I’m sure there is schmutz down there as well.  Also, taped over the intake to the fuel servo to prevent the shop spiders from taking up residence in the induction system.

Another task for the evening was to cut the sticks down.  I measured both sides and decided to cut off enough to compensate for the length added by the stick grips (~ 2.5″), plus another half inch.  Some builders cut them way down, but I’m taking a wait-and-see approach to that, as it’s easy to cut them down farther later, but far more difficult to add some back on.  After I cut them down, I (of course) had to load in the left seat and panel blank, and test it out.  The length seemed pretty comf0rtable to me, and it does not appear that they will hit the panel (using a ruler to simulate the ~1.5″ I’ m adding to the bottom of the stock panel.

I’m working with a gent who posted on VAF about doing some panel cutting for the cost of materials and shipping, and I think we have the measurements worked out; I’ll be drop-shipping an oversize blank to him this week for cutting, so that’s coming together as well.