March 6, 2004

Today was a day of electrical work. I started with a mission to try to see if the EFIS 1 would work with the VOR’s properly. Turns out, it wasn’t gonna happen since getting a VOR signal was nigh on impossible on the ground at YIP. Our closest VOR is DXO some 7 miles away.

I started the day by cleaning up a bit around the hangar. It was getting a bit messy. Then I went to work making the VOR antenna. It’s a Bob Archer wingtip style. Cameron made one for his plane, and while he was at it, he made all the pieces for mine and cleco’d them all together. Thanks Cam! I had received the Apollo antenna connectors from Wentworth aircraft too, so I made up a piece of test cable to try the antenna with my handheld. Works great! Well, it could barely pick up the DXO VOR, but for com it was great, even without being connected to the plane!

I had received the Apollo antenna connectors from Wentworth aircraft too, so I made up a piece of test cable to try the antenna with my handheld. Works great! Well, it could barely pick up the DXO VOR, but for com it was great, even without being connected to the plane!

So once I established that I wouldn’t be getting very far with testing the EFIS 1, I decided to carry on with antennae and made the Com1 cable and mouted the underbelly Commant CI-122. I made a doubler for the antenna, and managed to rivet it on myself, reaching through the aileron hole in the side of the fuselage!

Here is the Radio end of the cable. The connectors are pretty easy to fit to the cables. I only did one though. I need to do another three!

Here’s the doubler I made. I put nutplates on to make removal of the antenna less of a chore. Of course, this means it will be easy to steal! Hmmm.

Here I am trying to dimple the holes for countersunk rivets. This was a lot easier once I figured out why my rivet puller wasn’t working properly. A while ago, it exploded while I was attaching the rudder stops. I didn’t find the missing piece for months, then I just stumbled across it. I must’ve assembled the whole shebang wrong, because when I took it apart and put it all back together again, it worked fine. I think I need to get my hair cut. What a mess!

And the end result from the inside…

And the outside!

So, once this was done, I plugged in the ‘phones, switched on the radio and viola! Voices! So, it’s working pretty well, even in my metal hangar with the door closed. Funny thing is, if I stand in a certain place, I lose reception completely. It took me a while (over an hour) to figure out what was wrong, and in the process of this, I put a new connector on the antenna cable (waste of a connector and time), wiggled every wire between the headset and the antenna and all for nothing. Just moving around worked. A bit strange. Well, I also got a lot of noise on the YIP tower frequency, but no noise on DTW’s tower frequency. When this plane is on it’s wheels, I’ll push it out of the hangar and try it out again. Something else I haven’t done yet is put the cork gasket in between the antenna and the plane, so maybe this has an effect. I didn’t want to put it on now because I’m surely going to take the antenna off sometime before I complete this bird and I didn’t want to ruin it.