I've been working from home lately and therefore making a bunch of progress designing my electrical system! I am chipping away at the details on this setup a little bit every day but I thought I'd start posting my progress. Since I got a lot of questions answered on my other thread about buses, I think I finally have my schematic respectable enough to post on the internet.
I'll be running an Aerovee Turbo, and I'm planning a Garmin G3X Touch panel/avionics setup. I'm sure I'm not the first Sonex guy to do a G3X setup, but I didn't find much content about this system on here so maybe this thread will help more people in the future. Seems like Garmin is a lot more popular with RV dudes, so I found a lot of useful info on their forum... most of their systems are a lot more complicated than what I'm planning though.
Anyway, I will continuously update this thread as I figure everything out and eventually start actually building it. Hopefully by the end it will be another coherent reference for future builders. Electrical stuff is not one of my strongest areas so I'm open to any and all feedback!! I am figuring all of this out as I go. I know the schematic still needs quite a few details filled in... Namely choosing wire gauges and specifying grounding info for a lot of items, and probably lots of other details I'm missing.
Files I'm attaching so far are:
1. Wiring schematic
2. Big picture Garmin data bus layout
3. List of components (just a barely organized brainstorm at this point)
4. List of electrical loads by item
Future items I'm working on but not ready to post yet:
5. Garmin pinout spreadsheet
6. Detailed Garmin connections diagram
7. Panel Layout Imagery
Sources I referred to and/or blatantly copied to come up with my system:
Noel Wade:
http://sonexbuilders.net/viewtopic.php? ... ric#p26716Frank Alvarez:
http://sonexbuilders.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1564Ryan Roth:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4ApjY ... ZuYkU/viewJeff Schultz:
http://www.sonex604.com/misc/Sonex1374E ... 5Sep13.pdfBob Nuckolls figure Z-11 (or pretty much this:
https://bandc.com/wp-content/uploads/20 ... le_alt.pdf)
B&C Crowbar OV Diagram:
https://bandc.com/wp-content/uploads/20 ... 0_revJ.pdf--------------
Some questions I'm pondering now are:
-Did I do the crowbar overvoltage protection correctly? Seemed like there were a couple different ways to do it based on the diagrams I've seen.
-Anyone know if the overvoltage/alternator OFF warning light that comes with the crowbar kit can be replaced with a discrete input of some kind on an EFIS? This might be a question for Garmin, but a popup annunciator on the PFD might be cleaner and better than the warning light.
-The voltage regulator that comes with the Aerovee appears to be grounded just by its hardware to the firewall. However the B&C crowbar diagram shows a negative lead from the regulator connected to the negative terminal of the filter capacitor, then a ground wire twisted with the positive lead until it reaches its ground point. How do you guys do that with our regulator? Just put them close together and run a wire from the capacitor negative to a ring terminal on one of the regulator mounting bolts?
-Anyone know the power required for the Sonex fuel level probe transducer? The instructions that came with it say it needs 12 volts, but Garmin's fuel level transducer power terminal on the GEA 24 is only 5 volts. I wonder if it would still work, or maybe I could connect it to a different pin on the GEA 24. If not I'll just power that transducer from the bus like what I have depicted.
-I have an FT-90 (gold cube) fuel flow sensor that I bought from Sonex, but I can't remember why I bought that over the FT-60 red cube. Now that I'm digging into the details more the FT-90 seems to be geared toward way higher fuel flow than an Aerovee... Does it work or should I see if I can swap it for an FT-60?
Other things that are not really questions but just things I'm considering:
-Adding a keyed switch in series with the starter button for security, or just go no keys at all
-Keeping the power stabilizer to enable avionics to be on during engine start, or look into a separate/backup power source as discussed in the other power distribution thread