August 22, 2004

Now that the E1 is back in my hands, I figured I’d get it up and running again. Everything looks great! I was hoping to start hooking it into the avionics stack today, but a lack of three strand shielded cable put paid to that. Anyways, I got her fired up and started to figure out how to lay the cables for the display. The video cable is quite long (6ft), which is great if you’re a canard freak like BMA Owner/Electronics wizard Greg Richter, but in an RV, a shorter cable would be perfecto. Unfortunately, you’re not supposed to cut it. Well, looking at this, I think I’m going to look around for a shorter cable. There MUST be something out there somewhere!

I also received the Flash Card reader to use instead of the DVD drive. I have to say that this is a massive improvement. Solid state is the way it’s heading these days, so I figure this will work a treat. I took the time to discard the bezel supplied and mounted it directly to the panel. Looks quite nice, and not too overpowering like a DVD drive. I had no intentions of leaving the DVD drive in my plane while flying anyway, and this has definitely sorted that issue out. Sweetness.

I also started doing some pitot/static plumbing… I’ve really gotta do something about that fat loop of transatlantic phone cable….

Here’s a shot of her fired up…. No terrain display because I couldn’t get a GPS link inside the hangar. Although, later on, I opened the door and it found enough satelites to get a position.

I did some other miscellaneous wiring too today, but not really enough to warrant updating other pages….