Door Light Power

If you've been following along with the build then you know that I have installed a light at the bottom of my door. This light will turn on when the door is opened and shine down on the wing, lighting the way into the aircraft. I had postponed figuring out a way to get power from the fuselage to the door as long as I could. Now is the time where I have to figure it out if I want to finish wiring the overhead. After some head scratching I came up with an idea. It's simple and effective and I think it will last through some wear and tear.

I drilled two really tiny holes in the fuselage. They are slightly offset and are just big enough to slide a D-Sub pin into.

I superglued the pins in place for now to be sure they don't move.

I then added big globs of RTV for extra support and protection. This completed the "female" side of the plug.

I then started making the "male" side of the plug, a jumper cable, that jumps from the fuselage to the door. It spans the hinge so it has to be able to accept constant movement, be weather tight, still allow easy installation and removal of the doors.

I bent the male pins over after crimping them on the wire.

I then added heat shrink and slid them into the holes. With a little tape to hold them in place I added some superglue to be sure they don't move since their positions are important.

I added some RTV to make it more "squishy". Then applied heat shrink over the pins and pushed the pins through puncturing the heat shrink.

With the plug in place you can install the hinge plate over the top and when its bolted down it holds the connection in place, strain relieves the pins, and creates a weather tight seal. I added heat shrink tube to the two wires and, making sure they didn't cross each other, wrapped them around a screw driver and and applied heat from the heat gun. This created the coil shape that allows the movement of the door to open and close.

Here it is installed. It doesn't make the door any more difficult to install and doesn't get pinched or bind in any way. I'll go back and push that black connector further inside the pocket of the door before I paint the doors and the finished look will be really nice. Most people won't even notice the wire.

Overhead Cable Install

It takes a lot longer to run cables then I imagined in my head. But in this particular case I had to run a lot of cables in a hard to reach place and through the center support tube which was VERY tight. I have two GPS RG-400 cables, the magnetomer wire bundle and all kinds of power and lighting wires running through the overhead.

All of the cables are tie wrapped and Adel clamped in place.

Here you can see the nylon wire wrap that protects the bundle of wires and cables that run down the center tube. I wound up having to slide the wires and cable through the tube and then install it for this to work which is why this took longer than I thought.

Overhead Panel Wiring

Wiring the overhead took A LOT more work then I thought it was going to. It just took a lot of time to solder and wire the panel then what I had anticipated. But after testing the panel and seeing what it's going to look like and how its going to work. It was worth it.

First I test tested the switches and their lights. Notice in the bottom left of the picture I have a resistor in line with the switches. The resistor drops the voltage from 12 volts to the 2 volts that the lights need.

Here is the resistor and lighted switches I'm using.

After planning the locations for everything and then drilling holes in my already painted upper panel (nervous) I started soldering on wires. The "third hand" doohickey pictured here was essential in getting this done.

A close up shot of the soldering....not bad for someone with no experience.

Here is the resistor I spoke about earlier. Next I slide a piece of shrink tube over the connection securing everything.

The final product! A day and a half of work! The spaghetti mess of wires makes perfect sense to me!

The pretty finished side. The two round switches turn on the front reading lights. The center knob turns on and dims the interior lighting. And the four square looking switches are for the wing lights (position, nav, strobe, landing).