Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Brian A Manlove on December 5, 2013 at 11:42am

My battery / battery box location. That red stuff behind the spar is from where I accidentally bashed my elbow against an L brace and didn't know it until I saw the red stuff.  I'm trying to get all of my injuries taken care of *before* I finish the airplane :-O

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Marvin W Miller on December 5, 2013 at 6:41pm

Yes it's a decision you have to make. I put all my wires in a 1 in. Plastic flexible conduit and it runs inside, on the left side up over the spar, right by my leg. Of course i fasten it with clamps along the way. But your Emergency locating transmitter wire, should be kept separate and also radio antenna. Which I run them on the opposite side.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Brian A Manlove on December 6, 2013 at 12:46pm

Thanks Marvin... every bit of info helps!

Brian

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Dan Dempsey on December 6, 2013 at 8:41pm

I like your idea.  I routed all my wiring from front to back over the top of the vertical uprights inside the lip that the canopy rests on. I have tail lights, remote compass and  3 antenna cables going through there as well as my brake lines.

I see by your pictures you're going to have the battery back there, so I don't think my method will work for you because I don't think there'd be room.

I think if I was doing it again I'd route the wires through the channel on the bottom of the fuselage and then fashion a cover for it.  I think there's plenty of room to bring the wires up from under the floor into the cabin just behind the nose wheel bracket.  I know others have used that route.  I think this would also be a good route for the brake lines.  Mine have the disadvantage that they are so far above the brake cylinders it's hard to get all the air out of them.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Dan Dempsey on December 7, 2013 at 12:22am

I'm not sure how you'd get passed the wing spar.  You could put the wires under a wing root fairing.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Brian A Manlove on December 9, 2013 at 12:26am

Fantastic job on your airplane... all I can say is WOW.  I don't have the patience to handle a scratch build.

Anyway - thanks much for the back-and-forth on this discussion.  It gave me a brainstorm experience this morning and have come up with a very workable solution for my wire routing problem.

I made a 220mm wide X 30mm deep tray with flanges.  The forward and back ends are angled at around 60 degrees., like a trapezoid.  It's long enough to span from just forward of the landing gear channel, to forward of the main spar by several inches.

The front and rear angled ends of this tray will have 2 slots cut in so that the stiffener channel on the bottom of the fuselage sits in those slots, and allows the tray flanges to fit flush to the bottom of the fuselage.  The tray will also clear the bottom of the stiffener channel sides by around 10mm when it is riveted to the fuselage, because it's 30mm deep and the stiffener channel sides are 20mm.

This gives me a nice big 30mm deep "conduit" that will have about 70mm of space on either side of the center console.  My wires will come in on either side as necessary, in a split wireloom. That gets routed through the seat back piece down low by where it is riveted to the gear channel, down into the conduit through a hole under the seat pan, and then in front of the spar, a hole in the floor where the loom comes back up from the conduit.  There is more than enough room for brake lines in there too.  

I wanted to be able to avoid using the stiffener channel - by default that means I'd have to get in there right where all of the control cables and the torque tube are.  (because of my landing gear channel.) Using the "tray" I can route wires away from all that stuff.

 

I should have this clecoed in place tomorrow...  

Thanks again for all of your ideas, and making your website available... it's GREAT!

Brian

• ▶ Reply