September 6, 2004 HOME

Bill helped me today with more wiring tasks.  He labeled all the wires in the wing with labels printed on plain office paper and slid under shrink tubing.  The shrink tubing protects the labels from just about everything.  It's a lot of tedious work, but I think it will be really important when it comes time for maintenance.

I used larger shrink tubing to add some extra protection where the wires come through bushings.  It helps reduce the bend radius as well as protecting the wire from chafing.

Here is a stretched wire run that Bill ran through the wing.  I decided against conduit in favor of secure wire bundles and snap bushings.  He did a nice job of securing the end.  At the right of the loop in the picture, the ground wire is grounded to the end rib to assure uniform dependable grounding.  The attachment also serves as a strain relief for the wires that are secured to it.

The design and plans run the wire bundle behind the aileron bellcrank.  That is also the way most builders seem to have done, especially those using the pre-build wing skeletons (quick build).  The problem is that the wires barely touch the bellcrank.  Theory is, it is not enough contact to wear because it light contact and the bellcrank doesn't really have much travel.  I really didn't like that, but rather than totally rerouting the wires, I simply added a nylon tie to pull the wires back close to the back of the spar.  Simple enough.

 

   

This is just another shot to show that the wires now clear the bellcrank completely.  Here you can see that, never completely confident in any one solution, I added a piece of shrink tubing over the wire bundle just in case it came in contact with the bellcrank.  OK, overkill!  Add .003 ounces of unnecessary weight.  Wow!  Is this airplane going to be heavy!

A simple nylon tie at each end of the wire bundles serves to keep some tension on the wires so they don't sag excessively.  I am going to settle for this because it is simple and light.  If it seems that it is not working, it will be easy enough to add an Adel clamp.

Back to real structural work (and rework):  After riveting the flap hinge, I sighted down the length of the hinge.  Oops!  It wasn't straight.  I really really thought I had done everything right, including checking it as I went along.  Hmmm, rework time.  It really wasn't that bad.  There was only slight binding, but I knew that I'd always remember that it was really right.  I had 2 options.  One was to drill out the first 4 or 5 rivets and replace them with larger rivets drilled off-center.  The second was to drill out all the rivets and start over with a new piece of hinge stock.  Now really, do you think I'm going to do all that work?

I didn't do all that work.   I had Bill do it, explaining that it would be good practice for him :-)   Here's a shot of his progress at the end of the day.  It's more than half riveted, but then, he has the benefit of me checking his progress from time to time and giving advice, which I'm sure he very much appreciates :-) :-)

 

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