Controls, Wiring and Components:

Construction up to now was done during my first month with Kevin in Queensland. While all the parts were waiting their turn at a local automotive paint shop, I gave it a break for 2 months, as home duties & especially the farm were beckoning. I knew the final assembly would only take us a couple of weeks & that it would be a whole lot more fun to see the whole project come to completion. So I was very keen to start bolting things together, knowing they didn't have to come apart again.

The first photos show controls being installed, along with wiring. While these are all important & need to be done carefully; it's not difficult, because without all the body panels in the way, the parts are easy to get at & easy to ensure that you have done the job correctly. Our previous work assembling parts & then removing them meant that everything fitted into place without problems. The seat, floor & instrument panel were the first body panels to get in the way of anything but you could still get at both sides, which made the wiring easy.

Electronically, this helicopter is very advanced -- particularly for a machine that is built from a kit. One photo shows where the FADECs, ECUs etc. live, which is below the passenger's seat. You can also see the terminals for jump-starting the engine, should you ever get caught with a flat battery. Much easier to charge it this way too, should you be sitting in there on the ground, figuring out how the built-in Enigma GPS navigation works & flattening the battery. The Enigma is the South African designed single glass screen, which provides instrumentation, navigation & monitoring. It is designed to be user-configurable & the photo shows Kevin's set-up, which is so good for basic instrumentation, that I can't think of anything else I really need, until it comes to navigation. The only other instrumentation is standby tacho, ASI & fuel quantity.

I have shown one of Kevin's innovations: he puts a second cable tie around the first cable tie securing a wiring loom to other parts. This creates a standoff that keeps the loom from chafing. It also avoids oily grime collection, when the engine bay is well in use & makes it far easier to clean & to keep clean. The view of the engine from the right side shows an engine that should run, as long as the electronic controls work as designed.

The final photo shows the state of assembly so far. The tail boom is missing but it's time to see if the front half works.

Pedals, cyclic & collective.

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Section 7
Section 8