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Barry's RV14A
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Date: 2-12-2024
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Number of Hours: 2.30
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Manual Reference: N/A
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Brief Description: Wow - That Hurt...
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Today I wrapped up the wiring of the feed for the right control stick. When I finished that task, I placed the circuit breaker panel back into its housing & when I turned on the master switch - Ouch..!
Even though I took the precaution of wrapping the panel's bus bar in conduit, the system short-circuited & caused my heart to skip several beats. And yes, there's a lot of – “I could have done this better”, but the big takeaway is that I am lucky this happened on the ground & not in flight.
The avionics are fine. When I engage the master switch I usually watch for unusual indications & if my gut tells me something is amiss, I kill power immediately. Such was the case in this instance. The heart stopping moment was seeing the smoke arise from the breaker panel. My post event inspection revealed that the plastic conduit had melted, causing the smoke. Thankfully, it was not any wiring.
The Fix: Jameson & I headed to the local auto parts store & purchased some 5/8” OD / 1/2” ID fuel hose. Attached to the bus bar, the thick rubber now provides a better insulator than the thin-skinned plastic conduit. Tomorrow, I will modify the flanges of the circuit breaker panel's mounting rack to provide the much-needed clearance this high amperage array requires.
I did reach out to Stein Brooks of Stein Air & we discussed this chain of events. As usual, Stein was generous with his time & would like me to send a brief write-up , along with a few pictures, to enlighten other builders. I'm happy to do that.
Every day is a learning day…
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