Wild Week of Wiring

My wife and I needed a vacation. A break from the normal drudgery. I hatched a plan. "Honey, lets take a week off work, you can stay home, draw, paint, read, shop, whatever you desire. Ayla will go to daycare so no kid to worry about. And I will do nothing but work on the plane all day and then finish each day by dinner time. Then when Ayla goes to bed we have the evening to ourselves, together, no working on the plane"  ....she thought for second..... "ok" was the reply. She got more excited as the week "staycation" approached. : ).

My plan went even deeper. I was telling Ed Kranz about the idea for a full week of nothing but airplane work. Our discussion went something like this"
    Ed: What's you goal for the week.
    Me: Not sure, I'm gonna work on wiring the panel and whatever else I need to do.
    Ed: Do you think you can have power on by the end of the week?
    Me: I don't know, maybe.
    Ed: You can't do it.
    Me: Care to make it interesting?
    Ed: I bet you cheese curds at Oshkosh you can't have the instrument panel powered on by the end of the week.
    Me: Cheese curds and a beer.
    Ed: Done

So I got to work. I had a very direct goal now. This really helped me focus. If it didn't have to do with wiring the panel I didn't do it. I ignored all urges to complete so many other non bet winning goals....stay focused....cheese curds and beer will be mine! Sunday night at midnight is my deadline.

Step one...start bolting things on. I installed the GAD 29 on the forward side of the subpanel or "behind" the sub panel. This is the only thing that I put back there. It was an easy item to install back there and it connects directly to the GTN-650 so it made wiring easy. This pic shows the four screws holding it on. Also pictured is the route I took for the ignition wires and the auxiliary fuse block.

I started wiring the GTN-650. Even though only a few wires are installed you can see the complexity of each wire.

Here is the hole thing (GTN-650 connector bundle) wired up and in the plane.

"Staycation" begins...Day One

Day Two

Day Three

What a mess of wires...don't worry it all made sense to me at the time.

Day Four....I had to work squished in the foot well.

Day Five

Getting closer...things still need to be cleaned up and tied down, but that'll be after the power on test.

Day Six

Day Seven...Sunday night at 8:15

Cheese Curds and Beer are mine!!!!!

In the end the bet was very helpful in keeping me on track. My efficiency increased every day. By the end of the week I could wire a connector in half the time it took before. About half way through I thought I was going to lose my mind in the Amazon jungle of wires I had coming and going everywhere. I still have some wires I need to run tp finish things and then everything will be cleaned up, tied up, and finished off. When I do this I'll snap some pics of the final product. Until then my power on test confirmed that all was well (FYI I did power pin checks before connecting the battery). The screens are coming back down to finish working and since the system all checked out ok and worked I feel confident in finishing everything up completely!