FADEC 3
(Full Authority Digital Engine Control)
11/6/2005 12 Hours
I went to put the correct bolts in the FADEC ECU's today, and found a fatal flaw... I had one of the mounting plates on the wrong way round. "Wrong way round?" I hear you say... Yep. Despite appearances to the contrary, these plates are not symmetrical, reversible, flippable or flappable. Fortunately, it was the lower one that didn't have too much modification. If it was the top one, I'd be ordering up some new ones right now. I drilled out the mounting plate, spun it 180 and riveted it back on. What a pain. Well, it's easy done, so be warned!
The following pictures give you a great view of the location I chose for these hefty suckers. I got the bolts in finally, and I safety wired them too.
I ordered a serial bus controller ages ago from Aerosance, but it's still not here. It's the final part of the puzzle for the FADEC system. I need it to convert the FADEC info into something my Blue Mountain EFIS One can interpret. This will make all my engine gauges plug and play. No messing around with stuff. It should, in theory just pop right up on start up. I wonder why Aerosance take so long. Surely this sort of thing is off the shelf? I'm going to phone them tomorrow.
5/4/2006 Update
I still don't have a Serial Bus Controller. Aerosance are between design iterations, and have taken the SBC-100 off the market. After speaking to them yesterday, it seems like it's going to be about another month or so until they start shipping these things.
For me, that's a huge problem. I need to be in a position to start my engine pretty soon, so I called them the other day to figure something out. They sent me the software to use on a laptop, and a loaner cable. This will get me some engine info, but I also need oil temperature and more importantly, oil pressure. I wouldn't want to start it up and have no oil pressure and ruin a perfectly good engine.
Anyway, today I spoke with them again, and had them send me the senders I need. I can calibrate them on the EFIS one for now, and when the SBC arrives, I can wire it all properly.
The other issue I have with the SBC not being here, is I can't close the front fuselage up. Admittedly, I'm still a ways off this step, but I want to get it all together and check all systems are working correctly, then I can button her up. Obviously, I can't do the windshield until that skin is on. Doh!
5/11/2006 Update
I've been speaking a lot by e-mail with my buddies in Holland about the SBC controller. There's been talk on various forums, and some information posted in the Aerosance knowledge base that the SBC-100 will work with the EFIS 1, if wired correctly. The output from the SBC-100 is RS422, so if you connect just one of the wires A or B, the EFIS will be able to read the info. That's great news, but Aerosance wouldn't sell me an SBC-100. That's why I've been holding out for the new SBC-250.
Well, Aart & Co. PH-VII are using a VM1000C now for their engine monitoring, and they have an SBC-100, which is of no use to them. Aart offered their SBC-100 to me, and they'll then take the SBC-250. What a life saver! Word on the street is that it should be winging it's way here tomorrow! That's pretty nice of the guys in Holland to help me out this way. It'll get me a long way to getting my plane flying sometime this summer.
A whole hearted thanks go out to you guys. I owe you one!
5/16/2006 4 Hours
The SBC-100 arrived from Aart and the PH-VII team in holland on Monday, but I wasn't there to take delivery, so I signed the ticket for them to drop off at my back door. Tonight was the night to start getting it in the plane.
Here you can see where I mounted it. It was tough to find somewhere that would work with the wiring. As it happens, there's usually too much wiring on all this cabin harness stuff, but there wasn't enough on the harness to reach the oil pressure sender. Doh! Oh well. A few splices here and there. All in all though, we're making good progress.
On the other side of the sub panel is the HSA controller box. It's at an angle to suit the way the wires come into it. This position produced the least stress on the cables. They fell naturally this way. Lovely. Man, there must be a hundred pounds of wire in this thing now!
5/19/2006 2 Hours
Tonight, I had a little mess around with wiring for the SBC to the EFIS 1. I reconfigured the serial connection from the SL-30 Nav/Comm to go to Serial 2 to the EFIS. A long time ago, I had the serial port upgrade installed. Then I connected the RS422 'A' wire to the input for Serial 1 on the EFIS. Nothing. Hmmm... Well, the notes do say use A or B. I tried 'B', and hey presto, it worked! Woo hoo! I threw some gauges onto the display to see if it was working as expected, and it sure was. I need to configure this display so it's all a bit neater and logical.
5/20/2006 8 Hours
I got a shed load of electrical stuff done today, including the FADEC SBC wiring. The notes from the Aerosance knowledge base say to run a ground wire from the RS232 output that is for a laptop only, for the MFD ground. I decided to do this by mounting a D-Sub 9 pin plug on a rib, and running the cable from there. That way, I can just unplug the connector and hook it into a laptop if I need to do some diagnostics anytime. Simply reach in, unplug and play!
Here's the other side. It's all a bit wonky because I need to buy some mounting hardware for the socket.
For the J9 connector, I made a hole in a rib. One half of this connector is actually a bulkhead fitting. This worked out quite well to take up and support some of the wire that is in this harness. Lot's of it too!
For the SBC, all I need to do now is tie up the MFD #2 cable and shrink wrap the ends. Hopefully, it won't act like an antenna!
For some reason, I've never had my fuel pump warning light come on while we've been running the plane, so I decided I needed to troubleshoot the item today while epoxy was setting up on the wingtips.
I double checked my wiring, and sure enough there was the problem. I wired it so that all the wires leading to the light were gorunds! Well, as we all know, bulbs need some positive electricity flow to work, so I set about fixing the issue. Looks like I'd mistakenly thought the FADEC harness was supplying power when in fact it was pulling low. Duh! I fixed that little error and set about running the engine to confirm the fuel pump light worked as expected. Unfortunately, this took a while as I had also taken all the ignition leads of the plane last night to measure the lengths I needed to order to make the harness work neatly. I put all the leads back on and pushed the plane out for an engine start.
The fuel lamp came on as expected, at idle because the FADEC was turning on the boost pump as the engine driven pump wasn't supplying quite enough pressure. As I brought the RPM up the boost pump (and the lamp) turned off as the engine pump was now able to supply the pressure the FADEC was demanding. Perfect!
It seems now that I have all the FADEC stuff wrapped up except the ignition harness. I'll order those tomorrow, so we should be good to get that out of the way in the next week or two.