couple of wing questions

#1 i've seen some debate on the pitot location in regards to tie downs, but I haven't really seen any pictures of how the tie down is routed with the pitot position in question. only 1 out of 3 photos with them tied down i found, showed the pitot and i believe it was moved to the end. what is the big issue regarding the location?

#2 i keep having a fuel senders debate. i started with the stock floats, then to capacitance, back to float, back to capacitance. the floats I know will work, but I am not really sure what I am looking for with a capacitance configuration.

#3 the most important question, at which point should i be ordering the fuse? im about to start the tanks in the next few days

I mounted mine in the Plans location. The only way that a tie down line would have a chance to contact the pitot is if the tie down rings in the concrete are too close together. I haven't run into that situation yet.

If you decide on the stock float senders, you will find that they will not indicate the first 8 gallons. The dihedral and tank dimensions defeat that. The good news is, you can obtain great accuracy if you take your time in the calibration phase. Mine indicate around -+ 1 gallon in level flight. My fuel totalizer is the instrument that I use to manage fuel, the tank gauges are just a confirmation.

IRT when to purchase the fuse, is dependent on how quickly you plan on finishing the wings and how long the lead time is from Vans. I ordered everything together to save on shipping, and I am glad I did. It allowed me to work on multiple tasks depending on the time I had.

I can only speak to the first two questions with experience in my RV-6A, which has a heated pitot mast near the tie-down. But my -10 is being built with the pitot near the tiedown too. If I am parking with tie-downs in cement, I can always offset the RV a little bit to get the tie-down to clear the pitot and live with a different angle at the other wing. Who said they had to be symmetrical anyway. I think it will be less true for the -10, but the -6A is so small compared to other aircraft that the wing tie-downs also tend to angle forward because the aircraft is parked back far enough to have a reasonable reach for the tail tiedown.

I started out thinking I'd do a cap system but there is a chance I will be mixing avgas and autogas, not to mention whatever the new fuel turns out to be, and that would mean recalibrating depending on the fuel in the tank. And then my early training kicked in and I realized I don't depend on the gauges much anyway, except as a gross indication (should I ever get a massive leak). Like Bill, I have found that the senders Van's supplies are pretty accurate and when my tanks are below the effective range of the senders, I consider them empty.

As for the last question, I don't know if I'm typical or atypical but I bought all the kits at once and have been working on them together. The wings are mostly complete except for the bottom skins, so I could do the wiring at the same time I was laying systems into the fuselage and tail. And the plane has been on its gear long before I started the systems installation - I decided to forego using a fuselage cradle and instead made a rolling weight to simulate the engine and hold the nose down. So my vote is to buy as soon as you can afford it.

Both

daviid said:

#1 i've seen some debate on the pitot location in regards to tie downs, but I haven't really seen any pictures of how the tie down is routed with the pitot position in question. only 1 out of 3 photos with them tied down i found, showed the pitot and i believe it was moved to the end. what is the big issue regarding the location?

#2 i keep having a fuel senders debate. i started with the stock floats, then to capacitance, back to float, back to capacitance. the floats I know will work, but I am not really sure what I am looking for with a capacitance configuration.

#3 the most important question, at which point should i be ordering the fuse? im about to start the tanks in the next few days

Click to expand...

Regarding #2
Having debated this one a lot myself, and like most of us, over researched, over read, and asked way too many questions.... I installed both.
I plan on using the Cap senders, but should there be issues for some reason, I can just switch over the wire and connect to the floats... heck I might even run them both up to the panel then I don't even have to take off the fairing. Either way, they both are cheap and fairly easy to install.
The tanks will take you a while..... about when you think you are gong to close up the tanks, order the fuse.... then let the leak testing fun begin.... Welcome to proseal...... Actually it's not that bad... esp if you follow some of the tricks on this forum...