I intended to install the audio panel wiring harness this week, but when I started the job I quickly realized that I had a problem. It seems that I neglected to tell the avionics shop what length wire I needed between the connector at the audio panel and the passenger's headset jacks, and they didn't ask. I told them I was building an RV-8, but they obviously assumed I was building an aircraft with side-by-side seating, because there is no where near enough wire to get the passenger headset jacks all the way to the rear seat. :(

I don't want to send it back to the avionics shop yet again, so that leaves me with two options - mod it myself, or pay a local avionics shop to do the job. At the moment I'm leaning towards doing the job myself, because that will also let me string the wire through the holes in the bulkheads before attaching the headset jacks. If the head set jacks are attached to the wires before I start I'll need 13/16" holes in each bulkhead to get them through. If I attach the jacks after running the wires through, I can get by with a much smaller hole.

This weekend, while I was pondering the audio panel wiring harness questions, I attacked the mount for the Navaid wing leveler servo. I decided to mount it under the little shelf in the cockpit on the right side forward of the main spar. I got the idea from Ray Lynn. Randy Lervold also mounted his Navaid that way.

Picture from Randy Lervold's web site - I plan to make one change from the way Ray Lynn and Randy Lervold attached their wing leveler servos. They both mounted the servo on a platform with a vertical wall on the inboard and outboard ends of the platform. However, when the servo is engaged, and it needs to move the stick, the forces on the servo will tend to move it inboard and outboard, which is the direction that this platform is more flexible.

 

I intend to have my two walls on the front and rear sides, which will brace the platform for inboard and outboard movements. The down side is that I will have to put a bend in each piece of angle that attaches the walls to the floor, as the floor is sloped. I figure I can give each piece of angle a squeeze in the vice to sort that out. I'll post a picture of my platform once I finish building it.

 

 

I installed the control sticks in the fuselage several months ago, and expected that I would not have to take them out again. Well, today I realized that there was no way to drill the hole to bolt the arm that the wing leveler servo attaches to on the stick weldment unless I pulled the weldment out of the cockpit. It took me several hours to get it in the first time, so I wasn't happy about taking it out. In this picture you can see where I had to drill a hole through both vertical pieces of the weldment below the bolt that it pivots on.

 

It took quite a bit of beating with a hammer to get the second bend in that piece of 0.125 aluminum, but the result turned out OK. You can see the nut that goes on the bolt that secures the aluminum arm to the steel weldment.