Wiring, coax, antennas

I found the screws and lockwashers for the Garmin connector backshells, so I was able to get the audio panel connectors installed:

I'm not really happy with the way the wire bundles are pressed up against the reinforcing angle along the top of the radio stack. The wires are wrapped in silicone tape, and they're not free to move around very much, but then again that corner is sharp. I may drill out those rivets and replace the extruded angle with something that has a rounded edge instead. Once the top skin is riveted on, it's going to be very tough to get to these wires, so I want to eliminate any potential sources of future trouble.

Meanwhile, I installed an antenna splitter (aka quadraplexer) on the subpanel rib close to the back of the radio stack. This is an expensive little doodad that divides the output from the single antenna into separate nav and glideslope inputs for each 430.

I ran coax for both comm antennas, the nav antenna, and the marker beacon antenna, plus four short lengths from the radios to the nav antenna splitter. These wire bundles get big in a hurry when you start adding multiple parallel strands of RG-400.

Aerial view of the panel wiring so far:

Comm 1, nav, and marker antenna coax go down the left side of the floor, and comm 2 is the right. Not installed yet are the coax runs for the GPS (x3), transponder, and XM antennas. I'm waiting to run those until I get all the antennas installed in the aft fuselage, and until I have a solid plan for wire routing to avoid using up all the space in my spar bushings before I'm done running the small-gauge wires.

At the wing roots, the comm antenna coax is tied to the rib to keep it out of the way of the aileron pushrods, and the nav and marker antenna cables exit the fuselage through a snap bushing.

Eventually there'll be connectors for the wing wiring here – meanwhile I'm just leaving the fuselage wires extra long.

House chores on Sunday, no airplane work…