Sort of a two-parter here. Tuesday night, I did a pretty extensive inventory of all the avionics, in an attempt to document all the assorted fasteners I’d need to get things mounted. Once I had that done, I assembled a decent-sized Spruce order, and added the ELT because 1) I figure I’ll want to mount it semi-soon and 2) it allowed me to get free shipping. Now all that stuff’s on the way.
Tonight, I got started on the mount setup for the ADAHRS units. Originally I’d planned to build a sheet shelf like I have elsewhere, and put it right behind the baggage bulkhead, but I’ve rethought some of that. For one thing, I decided to move the mount back to just ahead of the next bulkhead. The reasoning here is to get some separation between the units and the baggage area. A concern here is ferrous material that might affect the magnetometer (aka electronic compass), especially ferrous material that moves around or isn’t always there – for example…baggage! This location will make maintenance less fun, like if I ever need to service or replace one of these, but that’s better than having them be unreliable.
I’m also fabricating the mount out of a combination of angle and thick stock. This is to 1) provide really good rigidity and 2) provide a mounting surface thick enough to tap for screws. In keeping with the ferrous-material concerns above, these units must be mounted with non-ferrous hardware, such as brass screws. I really don’t want to do screws and nuts here – I’m imagining trying to work a screwdriver and wrench back here to service one of these – and while stainless nutplates do exists, they’re harder to find and still not necessarily non-ferrous. So I’m just going to tap the mount and have the screws thread directly into it.
Anyway, all I did tonight was set the location of the rear angle piece and get it cut and trimmed to fit. Next comes the more fun part of laying out the second angle at the precise distance forward, and figuring out the fit of the plates that will tie them together. Tomorrow…
