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Phpwebhosting, who provide the server that this site lives on, had a major hardware failure on Friday, 28 Feb 2003. The site went off line, and they didn't have my account fully functional again until today.

Unfortunately, I hadn't been making site backups as often as I should have, and phpwebhosting apparently wasn't doing any better. The last backup I made dates from 16 Feb, so at the moment any information that was added to the site after 16 Feb has disappeared into the ether. I do have copies of some of it on my hard drive, but I need to find it and reload it. I will have to regenerate some other content from scratch, and some other stuff (e.g forum postings, or visitor comments) is gone forever.

Any user accounts that were created after 16 Feb were lost - you will have to create a new one. Same thing with any changes to user settings that were made after 16 Feb.

Inevitably, some of the site settings will have gotten fouled up. I'll try to find all the glitches over the next few days, but please let me know if something isn't working right.

Obviously there is a lesson to be learned here - make frequent backups. So, I will start making daily backups and copying them to my computer. In the medium term, I hope to find a way to automate this process.

It's good to be back on-line, finally.

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The Van's Air Force, Home Wing visited Van's recently, and a member took quite a few pictures of the four-place RV-10 prototype. The pictures had me a bit confused at first, as they clearly show two different cabins. But I read the RV-10 info on Van's web site again, and I learned that they are also building a cabin mockup that they will take to airshows.

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I decided to add a fourm (since removed) to the site to have a better way to capture questions and comments that are not directly related to one of the items on the main part of the site.

Comments or questions that are directly related to one of the items on the main part of the site should be made using the Comment feature at the bottom of each item. That will help keep all related discussion in one place.

The default text size in some parts of the forum is smaller than I want. I'll be working on making it more consistent with the text size on the other parts of the site. In theory that should be easy to do, but there are 76 different text sizes in the style sheet for the forum, and I need to puzzle out which setting apply to which things. Be patient.

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A box of goodies arrived from Vans on Friday - it contained the com antenna for the GNS-430, the vertical speed indicator (VSI), the fittings to finish the last oil cooler hose and some hinge material for the plenum chamber under the cowling. I always feel like a kid at Christmas when I am unwrapping this stuff.

20030209202836747 1Yesterday I modified the hole in the panel for the VSI - I had to make the cutout at the lower left corner where the adjustment screw is.

Com Antenna mount viewed from aboveThen I drilled the holes where the transponder and Com 1 antenna will go. Those two antenna are going one on each side of the bottom fuselage, aft of the main spar behind the footwells. That puts the two antenna a reasonable distance apart to avoid interference between them, and allows the coax connection to be accessed by removing the footwells.

This shot shows where the com antenna is aft of the left footwell. All you can really see is where the coax cable connects to the antenna, and the four nutplates where the screws that attach the antenna go. The roll trim servo can be seen inboard (above in this view) of the coax connector. The wires that go from left to right are temporarily hooked over the end of the trim servo to keep them out of the way while the holes were being drilled.

Com antenna viewed from below fuselageHere we see a view from the left side of the com antenna in the foreground, and way in the background, on the other side of the aircraft, you might be able to spy the transponder antenna sticking down (it is just a short rod sticking down, with a small knob on the end).

I had planned to run the coax cables to the antennae tonight, but my back is complaining from the abuse of being crouched inside the fuselage drilling big holes to route the coax through. So I'll take it easy tonight instead.

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I got a call from Scott Runyan, a friend in Wichita, today. He mentioned that he had seen mention of my list of Flight Test Links in the most recent issue of Kitplanes Magazine.

I walked down to the local news stand at lunch time, and sure enough, there is an article on internet resources in the March 2003 issue which mentions this site. Maybe this is my 15 minutes of fame :).

If any visitors find new links that I should add to the site, you can use the "Add a Site" feature in the Links section to tell me about it.

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Today I called the vendor to talk to him. He was very cooperative and easy to deal with. He said that his employees are supposed to ?ohm out? each harness, but that something obviously went wrong with my harness. He offered to take the harness back, personally fix all the problems, and to give it a complete inspection - no charge.Power line - I originally was concerned that I could be looking at a possible smoke event if the 20 AWG power line ever shorted. However, Bob Nuckolls responded that although a 10a fuse was a bit much for a 20 AWG wire, and the wire would get hotter than desired if it ever shorted, it should not lead to a smoke event.I discussed this issue with the vendor. He explained that the Garmin specified 18 AWG wire requires an extra long pin to make room for a larger crimp area. In his opinion, this long pin has a real risk of later shorting out against other wires in the connector. He discussed the issue with his local FAA folks, and convinced them to allow him to use 20 AWG wire.Note - this power line ?Y?s? to go to two pins, so it should be possible to use 20 AWG wire from the pins to the Y, and 18 AWG wire the rest of the way. I didn?t think to bring this up with the vendor while I had him on the phone, but I requested he do this in the letter I sent with the harnesses.Many people on the e-mail lists I frequent wanted me to name the vendor, as they seemed to want to stay away from him. That was not the point of my messages. Even with the issues I had with my wiring harness I am still glad I chose the vendor I did. Any vendor can make a mistake. The important thing is how they deal with the mistake.My story was intended to advise that wiring harnesses should be completely checked out on the bench before installing them in the aircraft. Several of my problems would not have been noticed until I was doing the functional checks after installation, and it would have been very difficult to find and correct the problems with harness embedded in the aircraft. Don\'t just assume that any vendor supplied part is good without inspecting it.The wait for the wiring harness to return will mean I have to stop instrument panel work, and move on to other things. The good news is there is no shortage of other stuff to work on. I\'ll install the transponder antenna, run the coax to the cockpit, and then attack the wing leveler servo and ELT, etc.