I have to travel for work this week, but I got a few hours in today before heading to the airport. I've been putting off climbing into the tailcone again to work on the ADAHRS stuff. The shelf was installed, but the unit itself wasn't bolted to it. In hindsight, I would have modified the standard ADAHRS shelf and moved it an inch forward to make it easier to install all of the wiring. The plans have it butting up against the bulkhead, which means there's about 1/4" of space between the back of the D-sub connector and the bulkhead (after the wiring is cranked to a 90 degree angle). A little more room to work would have been wonderful. Oh well.
Climbing back into the tailcone was a job in itself. Getting under the seat brace is easier said than done! Of course once I was in, I realized there was more work to do than I thought, so I had to do the contortion a few times. I gave in and removed the elevator pushrod to give myself more room to lay down.
All I really had to do was put 4 little brass bolts and nuts (non-magnetic) in to hold the ADAHRS unit in place. With barely any room to get my fingers on top of the shelf to hold the nuts, that took a while though. I wrapped the 90 degree bend of the wiring with plastic spiral wrap and tape to protect it from the shelf, but I'm still not all that happy with how it's setting. I think I may need to pull some slack into the wire to allow it to bend away from the shelf a little more. That sounds simple, but of course I tightened all of my wiring down a while back thinking I was done. I have a service loop at the instrument panel, but I'll probably have to undo the majority of zip ties to pull some slack all of the way to the back. I'll mull it over and see. It might just be easier to put some better protection on the wire at the shelf vs undo everything just for one more inch of slack.
