27 May 06 - Side Panel Lights, GPS Wiring, Heat Sink Adventures

More wiring odds and ends - really, at this point, we're just trying to finish up the details as we're waiting for a wiring harness from Stein Air to come in. This will be the harness that connects the radio, headphone jacks, intercom, iPod input, etc etc. That's pretty much the key to getting the radio in the stack and getting the right side of the panel (the main feature of which is the intercom) in there and getting the wiring finished.

Oh - also, we've more or less given up on getting the Garmin 296 to talk to the Pictorial Pilot. Trutrak's support via email, it should be noted, was no help at all. However, we'll probably just order one of the GPS antennas that they have a wiring diagram for, and that should make this less of an adventure. This makes wiring the 296 easier - all we've got to do is get it power.

In any case, we're sort of just doing minor projects until the wiring harness and the other GPS antenna show up. Today we're working on the lights, and GPS cable, and we should get power to the 296, too:

Lights are mounted in the side panels, which are now painted and all that sort of stuff. Working on running the wires, at this point.	Power to the 296. The way this mount is, you want to have a little extra slack so you can pull it out and disconnect it should you want to take the GPS anywhere else. We've clamped the wire so that you have enough slack but not so much that you put any strain on the other end of the harness.
The diode that connects the main bus to the emergency bus has a tendency to get a little warm at high loads, so a heat sink may be necessary. This one is probably overkill, but it's made out of aluminum, so it's pretty light.	Mounting it was done with just a few screws and nylock nuts. We turned the electrical system on and ran it for awhile, and it doesn't get warm at all anymore (although, we are just testing it with a partial load) - in any case, so far, it looks like this works great.
Woo hoo! There it is all lit up. Of course, there are still instruments missing and all that, but the lights are all in place.

Wires for the side panel lights: most folks that I have talked that have side lights where I do have run the wires for those down the sides, over to the center of the cabin floor, and then forward to the firewall. I was planning on doing that (in fact, the wire was originally cut to that length) but then it dawned on me that this can be run along the top straight back behind the panel. Seems to save a bit of wire and a lot of trouble with running it all over the place.

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