Last updated - 4/8/07.

This section describes some of the electrical work that I am doing. First, if you are going to wire an airplane, then I would suggest that you go to www.aeroelectric.com and buy Bob Nuckolls book, AeroElectric Connection. Initially, I was not too impressed with all of the typos on his website. However, after ordering and reading Jeppesen's Aircraft Electrical Systems, I gave Bob's book another chance. I'm glad I did, because it has everything that you probably want to know about wiring your aircraft. He tells you what you need and why you need it. The book is well worth the $30, even without being bound.

I have a couple of side projects where I have experimented with using LEDs for Nav and Strobe lights. I have built brackets to put 75W halogen lights in the wing tips for landing and taxi lights. The latest projects are the fuse status panel and the capacitive fuel gauges.

LED Nav/Strobe Light Project.

Landing/Taxi Light Project.

Fuse Status Project.

Capacitive Fuel Gauges Project.

Other Ideas - 4/8/07.

There's actually a number of things that I might want to do with one or more of my Z8 controler boards. Some of them I have already started working on (see list above), and some I am just thinking about. Here's the current list of things I have in mind:

• Fuel related features
  • convert input from capacitive senders to resistance or voltage and send it to another EIS
  • display fuel quantity
  • display fuel flow
  • generate low fuel voice alert
• Timer
  • total flight time
  • countdown timer
• Checklists
  • need some way to get the checklists into the chip, as well as a compression scheme
• Lighting
  • control the pulse to the LED strobes
  • wig wag
• Fuses
  • display blown fuse warnings (currently handled by separate board)
  • fuse voice alerts
• AOA indicator
  • two sensors in the wing tip, sense differential between each sensor
  • stall horn, voice alert, visual
• Flap position
  • use hall effect sensors to detect flap movement past each sensor, or use a pot to detect flap position
  • Display the position on the LCD
• Voice alerts
  • control the sound recording chipset
  • be able to record messages on the sound recording chip
  • send those messages as voice alerts to the intercom