Dual Battery setup (ETX-900s)

Hidden deep in the schematic is the heart of the system, two EarthX ETX900-VNT Lithium batteries. The VNT versions of the batteries have vent ports that allow one to externally route the off gas with the supplied tubing. I have installed these in a Z-14 like configuration with one Main Battery and one AUX Battery with a cross-feed contactor between them. I am using my AUX bus as the Aircraft Power 2 feeder in lieu of running something like an IBSS system. So the start-up procedure will be like this:

1. Move the AVIONICS toggle from Off to AUX in order to power the backup power to the essential components. (I will make another post with my AUX power configuration). This will give me a Radio, PFD, Navigator, and a couple of other essential items.
2. Move the MASTER toggle to the "Batt" position. This will enable the main 2GA wire going forward to the starter.
3. Start the Engine
4. Move the MASTER toggle to the "Alt" position. This will enable the alternator.
5. Move the AVIONICS toggle to the "ON" position. This will let the VPX-PRO power up the rest of the avionics.
6. Move the X-FEED contactor to "ON". This will connect the MAIN BUS to the AUX BUS and allow charging of the AUX system.

The first thing to do to enable this system was to build a new battery box to accept 2 batteries. I kept the original location, but by using Lithium batteries, I was able to put to batteries in the place of the 1 original. I welded some 1"x2" 6160 Aluminum Angle to form a box with some .063 2024 to form the bottom of the box that rested on the 1" leg of the sides.

I then welded two lengths of 1"x2" facing forward and aft in order to give the box a couple of mounting points to the original 4 AN3 nutplates. This was in perfect alignment of the original two tie down points as well so I could use the standard hold down bracket.

The new batteries are a little shorter and a little wider, but they are really stable. Shown here is the right side without the electronics tray. See the other post about the avionics tray that I tied into the battery box.

Panel Layout

One of the most rewarding aspects about building your own plane is configuring the electrical systems and avionics just the way you want. While I am not Instrument rated right now, I fully intend to get my IFR ticket as soon as I free up some time by not building, but flying. Ideally, I would also perform my IFR training in my own 10. We will see how that works out. 

I will get into the 2 battery 2 alternator system I have installed in later posts, but I figured I would start with my actual avionics. I selected the following: Vertical Power VPX-Pro, x2 GDU460, 3 axis autopilot with a GMC307, GTN650, x2 GSU25, GMU22, GTR20, GTX45, GMA245, GEA24, ACK ELT and all of the components to have these packages work together. I am leaving my right panel open for a RAM ball mount for an iPad and I did install 3 mechanical backup gauges front and center.

These components are installed into a Aerosport 310 Panel with a throttle quadrant in the center console.

It is a bit of a mess right now, but the heart of this system is physically installed into N50412K.

Wiring

I have been a bit busy lately not posting, but I have been building! For the past couple of weeks I have been really straightening out my electrical system. I spend a lot of time in CAD software at work and for me, it made a lot of sense to build out my electrical system in an actual schematic editor. While Eagle is more geared around building PCBs, it's schematic editor is pretty straight forward. It is also free to use, so I figured it would be a good platform to build out a GARMIN parts library so other people can benefit for the hours spent building out the parts. If you are looking for Eagle it is now part of Autodesk. You can get it here:

https://www.autodesk.com/products/eagle/overview

Over the next couple of weeks I plan to get the rest of my wiring system into Eagle. I have most of it in a drawing right now, but I am working on cleaning it up. I am at the point where I just made the connections, as I build the wiring harnesses themselves, I have been putting in the wire colors into the schematic and marking them off as done.

If you want access to my EAA Avionics library I am keeping it here: https://github.com/karrelsj/eaa

If you want access to my actual schematic: https://github.com/karrelsj/N5412K

FM-300R on a L1B5 sump

This is a post that is completely out of order as I forgot to publish it when I was working through this fit up. I have a Lycoming Thunderbolt IO-540 with a cold air sump off of a L1B5. when trying to put the FM-300R onto this sump I ran into a bit of a snag. i.e. the sump is in my way!

As you can see here I have about an inch and a half up or out that I need to get in order to get things to line up. I think the BPE cold air sump has a very angled forward face to it that allows this fit up to work.



No real big deal here. This is a standard problem which many places sell spacers for just this problem. In my case I called Don at airflow and ordered a 4 degree spacer. I figured this would do the trick. So close!!! I am about 1/8" from fitting.If you look at the top corner of the spacer you will see it pulled away from the sump because of the top of the servo contacting the sump.



I have the servo on upside down here just to take a photo. This brass hex (the adjustable jet) is what is contacting the sump. I did contemplate just taking the 1/8" off of this hex. Also, Don had mentioned that we could remove the adjustability out of this...


I went back and forth with Don though, and Jeff Schans shipped him out a sump to work on some fit ups. Don agreed to help prototype a new bracket that would push the servo out the 1/8" while also giving me a place to mount up the linkage cables.

Presumably the straight spacer could be pulled back closer to the sump, but I am not sure that buys you any cowl clearance because the straight spacer will be pushing the servo inlet closer to the cowling.

Intake Decisions

I have a FM-300R, the Show Planes cowling, and a Lycoming Thunderbolt IO-540 with a cold air sump off of a L1B5 ordered the intake from Bryan and Showplanes, but things are pretty tight.

BLUF, here are the paths I am debating right now:

1. Build a custom snorkel that is going to have some pretty sharp angles and a pretty funky setup around the FM-300R inlet
2. Cut a hole in the Show Planes lower cowl and install a Rod Bower ram air setup and fairing
3. Cut a hole in the Show Planes lower cowl and build a new air box/inlet

I have been swapping some components back and forth to see what option was going to be the best. To start, the FM-300R needs about 1/8" of additional clearance when using the 4 degree Airflow performance adapter. Right now I have been working with Don at Airflow and he has a cable bracket in prototype for this that not only holds the cables, but also gives me the additional clearance needed to fit the FM-300R with the L1B5 sump.

Airflow Performance straight spacer.

Airflow performance prototype linkage adapter.

This gets me pretty well setup without the cowl and intake. Getting the Showplanes snorkel intake in place with this setup is pretty tight. Well I guess it is a little more than tight as it doesn't fit. Here is the lower cowl installed in its final location with the FM-300 on a straight (NOT 4 degree) spacer.  There is about 1" of clearance between the servo and the cowl.

I ordered the straight spacer because with the 4 degree spacer, the intake transition had some clearance issues with the PlanePower 70A externally regulated alternator. As a note, the larger tube is not even on the "T" yet, this is just the T without the step up to the larger diameter tube that goes over the air filters. Also, this is with the alternator in the center of adjustment. Obviously, nothing is cut here either. I still need to transition the T to the FM-300R which has a lip on it for clamping purposes. I could bring this version of the T aft a bit in order to gain a little more clearance.

With the 4 degree spacer, there is much more space to work with.

With the 4 degree spacer, the 1/8 control linkage adapter, and the lower cowl put in place, there is roughly 2.25 inches of clearance. Which is not that bad.

With 2.25 inches of clearance and the angle of the cowl, this is what a 4" tube for a T would look like.

Here is what a non-deformed 4-5/8"s looks like. Mind you I have not run the engine yet, and you would have to expect that there would be settling that is going to occur as well as movement while running. This is the final dimension of the stock Showplanes intake tubing. 

For the left side of the intake, there is quite a bit of room to make the run directly up from where the notion T exists in the previous photos. The right side however there is not a lot of room between my vetterman (custom) exhaust and the PlanePower alternator. I was contemplating getting a smaller alternator, but I might as well not add those constraints to the setup if I am at this stage of the build.

This is pretty hard to see, but this photo is taken from the left side of the engine looking at the right with the T and the snorkel resting where ever I could get them to fit. The angles are possible to make, it is just a shame that this is the intake and there are going to be many >90 degree transitions.

Which really has me thinking why not just punch the intake straight out. I have been thinking about the Rod Bower design and I have an email out to him.

There are just sooo many bugs in Virginia that I feel like a large percentage of my flying is going to be with the ram air door closed sucking the warm air out of my lower cowling. I have been thinking about leveraging the C172 design.

I have also been looking at making that a little sexier and mimicking what the Sam James cowl looked like at one point.

Fly EFII ignition mount

I went with the FlyEFII System32 ignition (dual). They have a nice bracket for the coil pack, but this makes a pretty hefty assembly that needs to be mounted. There are various things people have done to mount this pack and most of them include standard adel clamps. I wanted something a little heavier duty, because this is a pretty heavy assembly. I ended up finding a light bar mounting bracket off of House Tuning that worked perfectly. This is the standard 7/8 tube rubber isolated light mount.

The coil pack holes accept AN-4s but the light bar mounts are 3/8s (or maybe even 5/16s). I placed a mcmaster order for some bushings (under bearings at mcmaster) to take the 3/8s holes and adapt them. The bushings didn't fit, so I reamed out the holes.

And then shortened up the bushings a bit.

This allowed me to install the front two mount points of the coil pack right behind the aft baffle on the main cross bar.

This looks like it is going to be perfect for the plug wire spacing (at least I hope so because anything other than this is going to be kind of a pain.

The last thing to do is make one hard mount point for the aft of the coil pack going down to the angled bar. I will do that another day. I am either going to come down the the angle bar, or I am going to install one of the bar mounts facing aft and flush mount a screw through the coil pack plate. For now though, it is pretty dang solid.

Transition Training

A couple of weeks ago my family flew out to Vernonia, OR so that I could fly 3 days with Mike Seager. I know this sounds a little bit crazy, but up until this point I have never flown nor sat in an RV-10. I have gotten a bunch of crap on that, but for me the 10 was a pretty easy decision. I was looking to build so that I knew how every single airplane system and control (at least in the plane that I was flying) worked. On top of that I wanted something safe, fast, 4 seater with a good user following. Also, at this point I am 2 years and 2000 hours into the build. If I don't like how this thing flys, well, its too late for that ;)

N220RV. The funny thing about this plane is that I was supposed to fly with Mitch in this 3 years ago when he was on the East Coast and I was debating building a 10. At the time, Mitch was going through a panel upgrade, and then he ended up taking the Vans HQ job and moved West. I guess now is as good as time as any to fly 220RV.


Mike has access to a bunch of RVs!


I knew this was a grass strip, but it really is a grass strip! All of my soft field "training" has always been simulated soft field.


I didn't take too many photos of the actual training. We did take this one of Mt Saint Helens though!

 

So what did I learn? With my mission being that I am doing the final layout and setup of my interior and engine, are there things I do or don't want?

1. Seat Belt holder - I know this is a silly easy add, but an overhead hook to hold the front seat seat belts was a nice to have in 220RV.
2. Yaw Damper - I have gone back and forth on this. I decided to put the brackets in as I was building, but I was not sure if I was going to put a yaw damper in. I honestly think that out of all the planes I have flown (not a lot), the 10 had a tail that likes to yaw a lot. Maybe it was the wind. Maybe it was my justification for buying more Garmin stuff. The short of it is that I am putting a yaw damper in my 10 for the sake of my rear passengers (my daughter and my dog).
3. Flaps - The Dynon and Flap switch that was in 220RV was weird. The up position in the flaps was reflex. I couldn't or didn't want to get used to this. Up to me should be 0 degrees with reflex being an additional motion you do in cruise. When I got home I found in the VPX-Pro manual that the flap switch (momentary up and momentary down) default setting is to when you hit "UP" move to the 0 setting and while at 0 if you hit up again, -3. That to me makes sense.
4. Doors handle - The stock door handles are ok. What is not okay are those stock wonky safety latches. I ended up with a full plane around 180 degree kit, center cams, and low profile latches. I like my decision on that.
5. Overhead air - The front NACA vents do a good job of keeping your man parts well ventilated. The stock airframe is missing some air for your face.