The days are kinda getting cooler and so I grabbed another couple of hours over the weekend to keep on working with the wires. During the week my 12ft coaxial cable had come so I hooked it up to the radio antenna.
I’ll come up with something to tidy that up later, keep it tight to the ceiling. I took the side channel out and enlarged the hole so that the coaxial cable would fit, reassembled it and routed the cable through the seat channel.
From there the cable join with the transponder and grip wires to head to the front.
(and yes before everything is sealed there will be ties, clamps etc to make sure nothing is rubbing, everything is neat and stable).
Now that all the wires are through from the back I was able to rivet the seat channels in. Well, saying I was able is a bit of an overstatement. I think these should have been riveted in place before the gear was in so they could have been riveted from underneath – but then we wouldn’t have been to get to the bolts for the gear, and the fuel lines. The air rivet gun wouldn’t fit at all but the hand gun just about managed it. Awkwardly. Not all of the best rivets I ever pulled but the channels are rock solid, it works.
Now that there are a lot of wires everywhere I gave the label maker a work out.
I drilled holes in the arm rests for the cables from the grips to run through and installed the grips feeding the wires down the stick.
With both sticks on, most wires go pilot side but a few go the other way.
Here’s a picture of the two grips, it looks like I should take a bit more off the pilot side but I’d really like to sit inside and see how the height works, it might be good – doesn’t have to be balanced?
Although not nearly done with the wires I wanted to see how the seats would fit and drill the holes to the final size. Ugh does not begin to describe it.The seats were a poor fit to start with but with the arm rests installed they are close to impossible to put in the plane.
I did get the passenger side in fairly well though not very well aligned with the seat channel.
The pilot side however was impossible, I don’t see how it could ever go in. So the arm rests need to be removed for the seat to go in but…. there’s no way the arm rests will go back in with the seats installed. Dilemma. I’ll have to research if others have discussed and I’m sure that Allen, when he returns in a couple of weeks, will have a solution. Otherwise I see snips and glue in their future.
I can’t believe how long this is all taking to get the wires through, frustrating.