It must be the weather
Hours: 2.0 | Posted in Electrical, EngineIt was interesting to me that two things appeared in the last couple days that found me where I’m at: an article in EAA’s homebuilding e-newsletter, and parts of a thread on VAF, both around with what the article named “Project Paralysis.” It must be the weather–for most of the month, it’s been gray, gloomy, raining/snowing, and cold (running 10+ degrees below average; we had snow yesterday for a bit). March was exciting, and I put in far more hours than expected (nearly 80), but April has been a downer. Only 25 hours, and the motivation to head to the shop in the evenings hasn’t really been there. Work is heading into the busy spring season, which will last the next 5+ weeks, but I don’t think it carries the sole blame for the lack of energy. Must be the weather…here’s hoping the snow stops soon. On the bright side, I’ve spent some good time with Allison talking/dreaming/scheming about plans for the summer and beyond.
This week, though, has been looking up. Lots of boxes arriving, the UPS man has been here every morning. Engine hoses, control cables, and my AFS screen are here, and the Vetterman exhaust should be in tomorrow. I’ve been reading up on fitting the cowl (among others, a good thread by Brantel on fitting the pink cowl, and a new one on baffles, plus DanH’s highly informative and well-illustrated fiberglass tips), which seems like a logical next step. I need to pick up or dig up some PVC pipe to use as a stand-in for the prop spacer, and fit the camloc strips first.
The task list for tonight was simple, and easy to motivate with new and exciting parts: test-fit the hoses, and fire up the EFIS. All the engine hoses seem to fit well (though the oil cooler is not yet installed, so those can’t be fit yet). I got these from Tom at TS Flightlines, who was easy to work with and fast getting them out.
The EFIS screen (AFS 4500-EE), having already wired all the harnesses during the panel install, slid right into the tray and powered up. Spent some time going through the menus, configuring serial ports and such. Two oddities I noticed (1. the master warn light never illuminated when it should, but did when the screen was powered off, and 2. the screen always powered on when the master was turned on, even though the avionics bus wasn’t on), turned out to be related, and a simple fix: I had inadvertantly inserted the pin for the master warn light into the wrong hole, which caused it to be hooked up to the backup power input. It was getting power on that backup input when the master went on (since the annunciator power is always on), and booting up (and illuminating the light). Once primary power was applied, it stopped using that backup input, and the light went out. Moving it to the correct pin solved both problems.
Allison came out and I put her seat in, and we sat in the plane looking at the panel. Tested that the audio out of the AFS works, and it talks to everything hooked to it: VP-X control, transponder gets altitude, a finger in the CO detector pops up a readout of O2 saturation and heartrate, and it sees data from the GPS. I posted a message on the AFS forum about the volt and amps gages…I had been under the impression they would take their readings from the VP-X datafeed, but that doesn’t seem to be the case, or at least I can’t find it in the menus. The voltmeter is using the internal sensor of the AFS (not a big deal, it matches the VP-X within 0.1 volt, but of course reads 0 when the avionics master is off), and the ammeter just reads 0, since I didn’t install the shunt (since I thought it would come from the VP-X). Both values are displayed on the VP status page, but it would be nice to have them as gages in the display, and be able to alert on them.
