Day 176

We’ve a few things going on. We have started trying to get the front cowling pieces to fit. In this venture, we are working to get a hub jig made. We assembled part of our Airmaster prop so that we can get a few measurements. The most problematic measurement to get has been the inner diameter of the cowling. It is not perfectly circular so as we try to get the measurement it’s different each time. We ended up making a template out of cardboard. Taking a marker we’re traced out the inside of the upper cowling. Then turned it around into it matched the circle and traced out the rest. Then measured the difference from the outside of the line to the inner most edge of the cowling. Subtracting this from the diameter of the marked line gave us the inner diameter measurement. We should be able to take these measurements now and make a jig.

We have also started working on finishing the coaxial connections on the avionics shelf and dash now that most of the components are mounted. We worked to figure out where the 8 antenna cables terminated at. After figuring these out we measured and cut cables to run from the terminal section we made in the belly of the fuselage up to the avionics. Then we’ve started making the coaxial BNC terminals.

Today we also finished the ELT Antenna routing and wire connection. We drilled a 1/2 hole in the top of the rear fuselage right next to the parachute cable tray directly behind the canopy. Then routed the cable around the luggage compartment, through a hole in the floor we made and down to the ELT box. We used zip ties to hold it in place in the belly of the plane and hight strength Velcro around the luggage compartment. We hooked up the wire harness to the unit and used an m4 bolt to ground the box to the fuselage frame.