It’s been a few months since I posted to the build log. July and August have been very cold months at this latitude, and the days short. Terrible weather for fiberglass work. Rather than spend a lot of time being miserable in the workshop, I decided to do some desk work until spring.
I needed to get the Electrical design done. I used Eagle for the schematics and made a parts library from the ground up. It’s 90% done, the other 10% depend on some avionics choices and finishing details that I’d rather put off for a bit.
I also needed to figure out the sub-panel cutouts, sub-panel equipment mounting points, and firewall penetrations. That all interacts with the avionics and engine choices (using sdsefi has a lot of ramifications), and the electrically dependent engine interacts with the electrical design. Until I do the firewall penetrations, I can’t do the firewall fire insulation work, and until I do that work I can’t bolt on the engine mount, and until the engine mount is bolted on I can’t mount the nose wheel leg, and without that I can’t get the air-frame off the dolly and up on the gear. The whole thing is a vicious circle of dependencies, and the cold of winter was a good time to work it all out. Not quite there with all of this design work yet but I’m close.
Just this week we’ve had a good spell of warm days, so I’ve rolled the cabin top outside and have been filling and sanding. It’s good to get back to physical work on the air-frame, so I’ll have some meaningful posts for the build log in the coming weeks and months. haven’t done a very good job of time keeping, but I’m estimating 200 hours of desk time across July and August for this work.