Thursday, November 13, 2014

RV-12 Avionics Kit Arrives

Frequent followers of the DOG Aviation blog may have noticed there has been reluctance to mate the RV-12’s tail cone to the fuselage. There a few contributing factors to this but mainly it mostly hinges around the ADAHRS  (Air Data and Altitude Heading Reference System) unit which gets installed onto a pair of brackets mounted underneath the tail cone’s top skin. Typically, the tail cone is attached and then the builder needs to crawl back into it making sure to not dent the thin aluminum and then install the electrical connectors, pitot and static air lines onto the ADAHRS unit. This is a task I have been dreading and have decided to order the avionics package early and install the ADAHRS unit in the tail cone now before the tail cone and fuselage are fully mated … think this method will be easier on the body and aircraft as well.

One of the bad things about ordering ANY kind of an electronic item … you  have to just accept the fact ... IT'S OBSOLETE THE DAY YOU PURCHASE IT ... period.  A fact that is hard to accept and typically a good reason to order Avionics near the end of a project … however crawling into the tail cone is not the least bit appealing to me, so decided to bite the bullet and order the avionics kit now.

The DOG Aviation procurement department ordered the RV-12 Avionics kit with an upgrade to the Dynon SkyView D1000 Touch screen and the optional ADSB receiver for receiving weather and traffic that can be displayed on the Dynon SkyView screen. The optional Dynon touch screen has been well received and comments have been very positive as to its functionality … so since it is an inexpensive upgrade, the decision was made the upgrade to the touch screen for the DOG Aviation RV-12.
Arrival of the RV-12’s avionics kit in two boxes … FedX did a good job, the boxes were unscathed from the long journey across the country.

The large box contains the bulk of the Avionics, switch panels, interconnecting cables and small hardware while the smaller box contained the ACK E-4 ELT (Emergency Locater Transmitter) and the backup battery for the Dynon SkyView.  The RV-12 Avionics kit as sold today consists of:

Dynon SkyView D1000 10" Display with optional upgrade to a touch screen
SV-ADAHRS-200 Attitude reference module
SV-XPNDR-261 Mode S Transponder
SV-GPS-250 GPS receiver
SV-BAT-320 Backup battery
SV-EMS-220 Engine Instrumentation Module w/probes
SV-SYNVIS-280 Synthetic Vision Module
SV-MAP-270 Moving Map software with USA FAA Navigation Database
Garmin GTR-200 Com radio/stereo Intercom
ACK E-04 ELT
Switch/fuse panels and control units
Wiring harnesses and mounting hardware

The contents of the large box after the paper filler was removed.

As mentioned above, the Dog Aviation SkyView will incorporate the upgraded touch screen option and in addition, the ADSB option was also ordered which consists of:

Dynon ADSB-470 receiver, antenna, and all required wiring and hardware. This allows SkyView-equipped RV-12s to access FAA broadcast weather, TFR and traffic info in flight with no subscription fees.

Inventory of the parts went well ... nothing appeared to be broken or possibly damaged from transit. The small hardware was inventoried and the plastic parts storage containers were reconfigured as necessary to accommodate the additional parts. There were only two minor issues …. a bad nut - one could see the manufacturer messed this one up and secondly, there were some nuts that were #10 and they should have been #8 according to the inventory sheet.

While doing the inventory, discovered there is an issue that could potentially create an issue for builders. The hardware that is used for mounting the ADAHRS unit onto the brackets in the tail cone needs to be made from nonferrous material. This is because there is a magnetometer inside the unit and having ferrous materials nearby can influence the magnetometer's accruacy. Van’s solves this issue by using brass nuts and screws (coated with a black material) for the mounting hardware.  RV-12 builders take note: An issue I ran into when inventorying bag 2860 is the brass lock nuts virtually look identical to the standard Cadmium plated steel nuts.  The only way to truly identify them is to sort through the nuts with a magnet.
The steel lock nuts in the foreground and the four brass lock nuts and black brass screws are in the background.
A magnet was needed to sort through the lock nuts to identify the brass hardware for mounting the ADAHRS unit.
The brass mounting hardware that will be used for mounting the ADAHRS unit onto the mounting brackets in the tail cone.