Brief Description: All antennae wired-Begun "plumbing"
I finished putting all the BNC connectors on the antennae this morning. We struggled to get more Marker Beacon wire through the grommet in the wing tip and were able to get just enough to reach the audio panel. If we had not been successful, we would have been forced to spice it. With done we hooked up all the wires to the radios. In image #1 you can see wires from the nav antenna going through a splitter to G/S and VOR connections on the Garmin 430. The black marker beacon antenna wire goes to the audio panel, the green wire goes to comm 2, and another brown wire goes to the transponder. Again we fired up the panel and for the first time, we were able to turn on the transponder and the marker beacon lights. The GPS antenna is wired but it must be mounted to the forward skin. With this done, we began working on the "plumbing". Our original pitot tubing was crimped as it made the turn from the wing root to pass through the spar box. I tried to reinforce it but was still concerned about so today since we had to use a different type of nylon tubing, I cut the original tubing just as it left the wing and connected it to the new tubing just as it inters the box. You can see the gold colored union in Image #2 and can see how the tubing now makes a gentle curve. You can also see the black M/B antenna wire making this same curve. Now that we had new pitot and static lines to the panel we began plumbing the instruments. You can see that it is VERY crowded! We now have lines to the autopilot and the backup air speed indicator. Wouldn't you know it, the ports are on different sides on these instruments and required careful labeling and a cross over. We plan to leave all these connections hooked up when we remove the panel and leave only the AOA tubing in the airplane. This way, I will have only 2 connections to make when we put the panel back in after the forward deck has been riveted in.
