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Any interest in a wiring schematic drafting service?

L

lndwarrior

Well Known Member
I struggled with the wiring for my aircraft. I ended up using the Z-11 wiring diagrams from the Aero Electric Connection.

The one advantage I had was that I am very experienced with Autocad and it was easy for me to draft, and update, my wiring diagram as changes occurred.

This recently got me wondering if there would be any interest in providing such a service for other RVers?

I could turn out a schematic for a pretty reasonable fee - and could update it as changes came up. At the end you would have a complete electronic record of your system that you could save as a pdf or print out in 24?36 and put up on your hangar wall as i do.

Anyway, I am not currently doing this - I'm just trying to gauge if there is any interest?

Appreciate any comments.

Gary Welch
 
Very interested

Yes, I would be interested. I am also very curious what information a builder would provide you with, for you to get what you need.

I have done several computer-drawn schematics of specific sub-systems, and I have a spreadsheet of all wires (what their functions are, what they are connected to, their size, terminators, pins, color, etc.), but I can't seem to do a quality overall schematic.

I would be willing to be your guinea pig if you want.
 
I'm willing to give it a try

cdeerinck said:
Yes, I would be interested. I am also very curious what information a builder would provide you with, for you to get what you need.

I have done several computer-drawn schematics of specific sub-systems, and I have a spreadsheet of all wires (what their functions are, what they are connected to, their size, terminators, pins, color, etc.), but I can't seem to do a quality overall schematic.

I would be willing to be your guinea pig if you want.
Click to expand...

Hi Chuck;
So I'd like to take you up on the guinea pig offer. Here's what I'm thinking

- This would be a trial effort so there won't be any kind of charge involved. You would be helping me figure out if this is even feasible.

- I am not a wiring expert in any way shape or form. In fact, I struggle with my understanding of electrical systems. So I would not "design" any part of your system, I would just draft it up and create a drawing of it that you can use.

- To expand on the above, I would not size any wires or make any suggestions as to how to wire things because I simply do not have the knowledge to do so. I put my wiring diagram together after coming to a realization. That was, I didn't have to know how to design a wiring diagram, I just needed to understand how to design the first wire from the positive side of the battery to the master contactor. After figuring that out, I moved on to the next wire in the system,and so on, until I miraculously ended up with a complete wiring diagram (though I did use Z-11 as the basis).

- You hit on my first thought - get a spreadsheet of the wires, wire sizes, fuse size and equipment served.

- I would also need a description/sketch of your basic system architecture. It would be simpler if you used one of the Z diagrams from A.E.C. as your basis. If not, I might need a a fairly detailed sketch of your main power distribution layout.

- This effort would be for power distribution only. It would not include all the various sensor and control wires and components. That would be a whole separate issue and probably not necessary since you probably already have these diagrams from the various component manufacturers.

- This will take a bit of back and forth to get it exactly right. So I would start with the initial info, send you a pdf which you can mark up, correct or comment on and return back to me. I'm sure I'll have a number of questions as well.

- Lastly I reserve the right to bail out on this if it turns out to be more aggravation that it's worth %^).

If you'd really like to try this why don't you email me your wiring spreadsheet and provide some description/diagram/whatever of your basic system architecture and I'll take a look at it and get back to you.

Email me directly at [email protected].

Gary Welch, Groveland CA
 
Honestly I don't see much point to doing a wiring schematic without including information about wire gauges, amperages, current protection devices, and other design info affected by its physical placement in the aircraft. At least for a power distribution system. If this is all info they need to provide they can do it in PowerPoint if they want, it will be as useful.
 
BMC_Dave said:
Honestly I don't see much point to doing a wiring schematic without including information about wire gauges, amperages, current protection devices, and other design info affected by its physical placement in the aircraft. At least for a power distribution system. If this is all info they need to provide they can do it in PowerPoint if they want, it will be as useful.
Click to expand...

I think you missed Chuck's comment where he said he had a spreadsheet of wire sizes, fuse sizes and amperages that he could provide to me.

My intent is to INCLUDE wire gauges, amperages and fuses/sizes.

What you misunderstood about my comment was that I do not want to be the one to SIZE these components. The owner would provide this information to me and I would include them in the diagram.

I agree, the diagram would e near useless without this information.

Physical placement in the aircraft is of less value since most components locations are obvious, For any non-obvious locations a note could be easily added to the wiring schematic as to the location.

For my own plane I did start a diagram to show device locations but gave up halfway through it. For me 95% of the stuff had clearly obvious locations and the other 5% was easily determined. This might be helpful for a new owner if you were to sell the plane, however.
 
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Isn't Stein doing this?

I could be wrong, but I believe that Stein is offering this service now, not sure if it's for anyone or only those that get a panel from him.
 
Throwing in the towel on this idea

I am sorry to say I am throwing in the towel on this idea.

After working for a very significant amount of time on a test case i came to the conclusion that it is far more effort than I have time or patience for.

I understand now why no one else is doing this.

Gary
 
What about if you had hand drawn sketches of each component with all the information and all you had to do was plot it out?
 
Is your proposed service to provide a schematic of an existing system? I would have been very interested in a schematic utilizing a VPX, Dynon HDX and Van's harnesses. Never could get any of the companies to provide one, I finally found one that SteinAir did for a customer but using Garmin, It was a big help. I don't think a map of where I have been would be helpful at this point, but maybe.
 
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