Category: Electrical

Custom Electrical Installations for Aircraft: First Power Up

January 10, 2025
I’ve spent the last few weeks installing all the electrical provisions, ramping up especially the last few weeks over the holidays to reach a safe-to-apply-power state. I successfully powered up the airplane for the first time this past weekend and it was nice to finally see the panel all...

HVAC System and Panel Progress

August 21, 2024
This is a long overdue update on my project, but I’ve been quite busy on a few different aspects. First major update is that the custom HVAC system is about 90% complete. I’ve gone through so many iterations of the design over the last 3 years, but earlier this...

Avionics Work

March 8, 2024
I’m slowly but surely getting all the avionics connected, and along the way, creating brackets and similar provisions for securing bulkhead connectors and wiring bundles. Here are a few photos showing how I created a plate that holds two circular connectors (TE CPC series 2) for passing most of...

Wire Harness Mod for Fuel Pumps

April 7, 2023
(March 4, 2023) Just sharing a quick blurb about an easy change to the Rotax wire harness that makes it easier to connect the fuel pumps. The as-built wire harness on the engine isn’t quite long enough to reach one of the two fuel pumps, due to the orientation...

Avionics Component Mounting

December 31, 2022
Over the last few weeks I’ve been splitting time between avionics and engine plumbing while I wait for some hardware to arrive. There are quite a few remote avionics boxes to mount, and I quickly determined I needed to create a few brackets to make more space. I am...

Instrument Panel Arrived

August 20, 2022
I’ve been fiddling with the instrument panel layout for at least 2 years now, but finally arrived at the final design. And thanks to the awesome team at Midwest Panel Builders, I now have the real thing in my garage! Steve at MWPB did a great job with the...

Aileron Trim and Wing Electronics Module

January 6, 2022
This past weekend I finished up most of the aileron trim servo installation. My remaining tasks were to glue down the doubler, and to install the connectors for the wire harness. Before gluing down the doubler, I decided to increase the number of screws holding the plate from 8...

Aileron Trim Servo

December 27, 2021
It’s been a little bit since my last logbook entry, but have some great news to share. I recently made an exciting career change — I accepted an offer to work for a startup company called Merlin Labs and I’m helping create an autonomous flight system for retrofitting into...

Aileron Trim Kit

July 15, 2021
It’s been a little bit since I posted, but there are a few exciting developments to share. First, I got word that my firewall forward kit arrived in Torrance CA last week and is on its way to me! This is the long-awaiting custom kit that will allow me...

Electrical Loads Analysis

March 8, 2021
Another builder was looking for an electrical loads analysis, here is what I have so far. The 915iS engine has dual internal generators; the ‘A’ generator provides power to the Engine Management System (EMS) normally, and a second ‘B’ generator supplies power for everything else in the airframe, up...