Wing Conduit Hole ?

Hi Everyone,

I am on the wing stage where i need to make the holes for conduit passing.

I just don't know how many conduits i have to pass, and the documentation from vans did't help much.

Can anyone give me some info about this?

Thanks in advance,
Alex - RV7 - Brazil
Empennage - Done
Wings - In construction..

While not a -7, it is very similar.

I put in one conduit hole for the wires and two smaller holes for snap bushings to guide the pitot and AoA line for the Dynon pitot tube.

There are pictures here.

We did the same on our 7 - only difference was we used lightweight 3/4" air pipe as the conduit for the wiring.

AoA and Pitot come through snap bushings.

Top tip to open the holes.

Take a cheap 3/4" step drill, get it welded onto a 4 foot piece of 1/4" steel rod.

You can now drill your holes all the way down the wing and they will be perfectly straight !

Alex,

I just drilled my left wing ribs this past weekend. I used a step bit and its pretty quick. I put one hole in for a 3/4" conduit. I made a simple template to place the starter hole in the same place on every rib. Dont forget that the outboard ribs are 1/8" shorter so you have to adjust when you get to the outer ribs. This may not really matter, but I got mine all lined up. I plan to put most of the wiring in the conduit.

I also opened up the lower forward tooling hole as Bill showed for the Pitot or AOA. I then opened up the upper tooling just in case I wanted to run a coax out to the wing tip. I wanted to keep any coax away from the other wiring.

On the right wing I plan to put in the conduit and at least one of the forward holes for a coax.

Not to switch subjects here, but once the Pitot and AOA lines are installed is RTV normally added to keep them in place or are they just left alone? I haven't seen any mention of this so I was just curious what the standard practice is.

Bom Dia Alex,
There is no requirement to put conduit in the wings. Most people do it because it is just a really easy way to get wires and AOA tubing to the end of the wing.
Vans sells a kit that you can install, but you may be able to find something local to perform the same job. Vans also has these instructions for running wires to the wingtips.

Good luck.

Van's has a template for where the hole should be. Just make sure that you don't put it directly over a rivet hole in the ribs, or it will be tough to buck when you put the bottom skins on.
I drilled the holes for the conduit in the ribs before attaching them to the wing spar. Use a couple of clecos in the tooling holes of the ribs to transfer the hole location from one rib to another.

I ran a single length of the black conduit for my wires, but also put in grommets for my "high noise" wires (HID, strobes, and LED lights) to keep them separate from the others, to try and keep as much electrical noise out of the system as possible.

seems that the conduit is optional, but now the things are a lot clear, i'll just going with the snap bushing for the wires.

thanks a lot guys, great to be a part of this comunity!

I made metal tabs to hold the conduit and then popped rivet them to the lightening holes in the wings. You can buy light weight conduit and tape it to the tabs then put a tie wrap around it.. Nice thing doing it this way you can use a snake latter and run extra lines if you forgot something.

You'll have a few more wires than you think.

for the tip lights that I have that is two.
plus 4 for the LED nav lights and strobes.
plus another 3 in one wing for the pitot heater and in the other wing
about 5 more fore the dynon servo.

Lot's of folks use their com antenna in the wing tips. I did not..
Smilin'Jack
If you check my post up above waiting on fusledge you see a link to my page.

Use the holes that are there

I used light weight PVC drain tube mounted through the lightening holes.

and pipe hangers from Home Depot attached with aluminum pull rivets.

Just a quick note to add to it, please remember I am not a builder yet, but you can also use Drip tube from home depot, its cheap, cut to length and very very light weight.
http://www.homedepot.com/Outdoors-G...splay?catalogId=10053&langId=-1&storeId=10051

12 bucks for 100 feet, can get it in 1/4 , 1/2 and 5/8 inch. I use the 1/2 around the house for speaker, cat5, phone runs works good.

if you really want to get fancy, these liquid tight flex connectors are a snug fit on the 1/2 drip tubes, a little PVC clue would keep the lock nut from rotating off, can get in straight or 90 degree, hope the idea helps someone.

http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc...play?catalogId=10053&langId=-1&keyword=liquid tight&storeId=10051

I did like Avi8tor Tom .... used smooth wall tubing for conduit. It made pulling wire a breeze. When I had to go back and pull an additional wire later in the build, I was able to PUSH a piece of .041" safety wire thru the smooth wall tubing to use as a pulling line. I suspect that could be tough in that corrugated (?) black stuff.

Count them

How many conduits you run depends on what you have in the wings. You should have a component layout for the plane - what goes in the wings, what in the fuselage, what in the tail, etc. My wing list has lights, strobes, antennas in wing tips, pitot heat and plumbing, servos, etc. I run the high noise cables separately, but they do not have to be too far apart from the comm and radio signals. The conduit is so you put in additional wires and is worth the flexibility.
leave a little extra room

Kreeve said:

Just a quick note to add to it, please remember I am not a builder yet, but you can also use Drip tube from home depot, its cheap, cut to length and very very light weight.

Click to expand...

Welcome to VAF, Kevin! It's so cool when a new guy lurks for awhile and then makes their first post something useful. That's really keeping with the spirit of this place. Hope you stick around! You'll be a great addition to a great group of people. And let us know when you start building. Soon, I hope.

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Stephen