All systems are go!

At least, I think they now are. I arrived at Malbec bright and early (for me anyway) this morning with the aim of cracking on and getting the Savannah’s full new avionics and instrument panel installed and working. However, I was brought up short immediately, but only temporarily, because I found that I’d attached the extensions to the little headset brackets that I made yesterday the wrong way round.

Luckily I had my drill and pop riveter with me so all I had to do was drill the connecting pop rivets out, turn the extensions around and pop rivet them back on again. Here are a couple of shots with them finally mounted in position on each side of the cabin under the dash panel. They are a big improvement on what was there before which were very floppy and flimsy.

Then it was time to start on installing the radio cable kit. I decided that before I went ahead and permanently installed it, I’d connect everything up and make sure it worked properly first. And that’s what I did. It wasn’t difficult because it was only a matter of connecting up the two PTT buttons, the 12V power supply and the system earth and here’s how it looked all ready to switch on and try out.

As well as my old Aerolite headset that I haven’t used since the 1980s when we had our Piper Cherokee, I’d also taken my little hand-held Vertex VXA-220 transceiver with me ready for just such an event and as it happened, Victor had arrived a bit earlier to modify the lifting mechanism on the hangar doors. So I gave him the Vertex and told him what I wanted to do as a test.

Initially, although I could hear him very clearly on the new radio, he said that he could hear me transmitting on the Savannah’s right-hand head set but not on the left, which was just transmitting carrier wave. I surmised that this was down to my not having re-run the mic set up and this proved to be the case as afterwards transmitting and receiving turned out to be perfect.

So then it was a matter of mounting all of the cabling securely behind the Savannah’s instrument panel and finally securing the panel in position. I forgot to mention that earlier on I’d traced why the low fuel test system wasn’t working – some earth leads had become detached from the back of a gauge when I’d moved the panel forwards before I’d had a chance to record which tag they should be plugged to, due to the original cable ties being too tight. So that was a bit of luck as I hadn’t fancied trying to trace whatever the reason for the problem was.

As the end of the afternoon approached, the job was finally nearing completion and here are a couple of shots with the panel powered up and working.

The climax came with the first engine start since I began this project over 6 weeks ago. The engine started very easily with its new carb rubbers and idled and powered up OK. All of the gauges began to read as expected, which was a relief, except for the oil temperature gauge which always takes some time to show a reading. But what of the little microelectronic device controlling the hour meter?

The hour meter didn’t start running at low revs, just as intended. It was a bit problematic running the engine up to over 3000 rpm because the Savannah was still in the barn with my car next to it. However, I ran it for a short while at an indicated 3400 rpm and the hour meter did advance, so it looks as though all of the systems, both original and newly-installed, are working as they should.

I now need to do a flight to make sure and then arrange for the new avionics to be signed off at La Rochelle. That should be a great flight if the weather is anything like today, not much wind and a high of 25 degrees Celsius, and I’m looking forward to it very much after all of the grind of the last few weeks to get the whole panel project completed. At least it now looks as though it is 😕