Wiring the RV-12 continues … have been chipping
away at making labels and inserting wires in connectors. Although some time was
taken away from production for the first lawn mowing of the year (a sure sign of
warmer weather) and to work out a few issues with running the shielded cable
for the strobes and wiring in an
additional switch for the left landing light. More on that topic when I
get it finalized.
The next step in the wiring section would have
the builder install the push to talk button wiring in the control sticks and mount
the control sticks so the push to talk wires can be dressed properly. Decided
to take a pass on dong this now because I’m leaning towards installing a stick
with additional switches for auto pilot, trim, etc. so want to hold off making a
final decision on stick grips until after making comparisons at Oshkosh.
Next page - the fuel pump wiring received a
little attention … the fuel pump power lead from the instrument panel and the
red wire from the pump receive spade connectors which will attach onto a large capacitor seen in the photo below.
(Which I’m assuming is used as an electrical noise filter). The fuel pump
mounting bolt closest to the wire run receives an Adel clamp which is used to
suspend the wires running down the center tunnel and is also the grounding
point for the fuel pump’s ground wire. The Adel clamp needs to be drilled out
to 1/4" to allow the fuel pump’s mounting bolt to pass through it.
Crimping a spade connector on the fuel pump’s
power wire.
The co-pilot headset and mike jacks were
installed next. One thing that is important to remember is audio jacks typically
need to “float” and do not get grounded to the airframe. I have read more than
one complaint about noise in the audio which ultimately ended up being caused by the headset jacks being installed incorrectly.
Looking closely one can see the shoulder on the black
insulating washer in my fingers … this goes inside the mounting hole preventing the threaded
mounting shaft on the jack from becoming grounded on the inside edge of the
mounting hole. The other nonmetallic washers will insulate the mounting nuts
from the floor pan.
The headset & mic jacks are installed using
the above plastic shoulder washer, however the shoulder needs to be sanded or
filed down a bit because the shoulder is slightly taller than the thickness of floor
pan. After the jacks are slid up through the mounting holes the flat insulating
washers are used to insulate the metal shaft of the jack from the aluminum
floor pan.
Return from the future: There is an error in the prints regarding
the wiring of the ES-00043 headset module connectors. Figure 2 shows the wiring
for the connector from the wire insertion side … caution the connector’s pin
numbers as shown in the plans are wrong. An update to the plans is coming from
Van’s. I did not notice or fall into this trap because I was referring to the big
wiring diagram and reading the pin numbers directly off the connector itself.
Below is the bad and correct wiring for the ES- 00043 headset module connector as
viewed from the wire insertion side of the connector with the locking tab on
the bottom of the connector as shown in the drawing.
Bad as shown 6 5 4 3 2 1
in the drawing 12 11 10 9 8 7
Correct pin
1 2 3 4 5 6
locations 7 8 9 10 11 12
Before sliding the wires into the Molex micro connectors
printed heat shrink labels were made to identify the wires.
Installing the co-pilot headset and mic wires
into a Molex micro connector.
Co-pilot Mic and headset jacks installed onto
the floor pan.
