First power on!
TLDR
- Connected the rest of wires for first power on
- Turned on power for the first time
- Debugged GMU11 Issue (to be continued)
Detail
Wiring
In the morning, I connected the battery ground wire from the MPB harness to the airframe. This completes all the required wiring to supply power to the panel.
Then I put the panel onto the airplane for a test run. Once the panel was on, I had to connect the CPCs between the panel and the rack. It was a minor pain, but got it done.
Then I finally was able to figure out the correct length of the G3X GPS wire. I crimped a BNC connector to it.
After that, I put the G5, GNX 375, G3X onto the panel one by one and connected their wires.
I am not particularly happy about the 375 wires. The 375 rack has a metal piece sticking out and touching a wire bundle. And the GPS cable for the 375 unit was bending more than what I want. Once the test run is done, I will need to figure out something to protect the wire here.
Power on test
With backup battery
With a flip of EFIS Backup switch, the screen turned on!
Lots of errors, of course! I haven’t connected the engine. Neither have I calibrated anything.
With main battery
Then I turned off the backup battery and turn on master switch.
This time the G5 also turned on.
GMU 11 Issue
During the test, master caution light turned on. The PFD has a message “Magnetometer power supply fault”
This is a concern.
I emailed MPB for their opinion. They suggested to check the ground and power on GMU 11 end, which made sense.
So I took off the DSUB connector to investigate.
This was probably one of my first connectors. Obviously I didn’t have nearly enough experience. On the first glance I didn’t put any silicon wrap on the stress relief. I’m glad I took it off for debug. Otherwise I might not be able to find this out and improve.
So I took the connector apart and checked the pins. I’m not sure what steps I was following when building this, but the pins were not really where they were supposed to be at.
I tried to use the D-sub pin extractor tool to pull the pins out. It was a PITA and was not successful. I actually pulled a wire out and left its pin in the slot.
So I decided to just buy a new connector kit and redo the wire altogether. Order placed with spruce, I will resume this work when it arrives.