By James Slade, EAA 1435575
Whenever my brother needed a fast excuse for why he was late (he is a last-minute or later kind of guy), his go-to was that he was almost hit by a gravel truck. This gave him a lot of room with Mom, being the first son and all, but the rest of us never bought it for a second. Gravel truck today could be replaced by a minivan, three-ton pickup, or anything bearing a Winnipeg license plate; but today I want to apply my brother’s excuse as something more like sage advice. One reality we face as airplane builders is that we could, in fact, be hit by a gravel truck, or encounter any number of mishaps that could take us forever away from our beloved hangars, so today, I want you to think of the next builder. Think of the purchaser or colleague who is going to be continuing with your project after the gravel truck has left its marks and driven away. What can we do today to help the next builder carry on?
Our Emeraude project actually suffered just such a blow when one of our team was tragically taken away from us while he was test-flying another project. Peter was our electronics expert and was working hard to complete our instrumentation installations, and anyone who has worked on an instrument panel knows the kind of detailed, meticulous mind you have to have during this phase of the project. When he passed, Peter didn’t have time to sit down and tell us everything he had completed and what remained to be done. He didn’t have time to show us where the schematics were stashed, what switches were still meant to go where, and how many holes we still needed in the firewall. One day, there he was. The next day, there he wasn’t.
Fortunately, we spent considerable time together in the hangar going over the panel design details, discussing why soldering is not suitable for aircraft, what colour wires to use, and dozens of other details. At the end of every day, I always make a logbook entry in our building log, telling Peter, this is where to look in case I get hit by a gravel truck. The logbook entries were detailed enough, I hoped, to give anyone picking up where I left off enough information to carry on, but Peter never caught the habit.
What he did catch was our soldering discussions. I always knew the guy could be teaching a master class in electronics, but aviation is a different situation. The vibrations our airframes have to endure get transmitted to everything attached including electronics and wiring. Sure enough, when I finally delved into the back of the panel, I could see our discussions had borne fruit. Not only were all our terminals crimped on securely, but ring terminals had lock washers. Wiring was colourful as opposed to monochrome. Some people love the conformity of all their wires being the same colour; that looks nice, but it would be a monster to have to troubleshoot.
Not only was the wiring colourful, but I discovered it provided clues at every step. There were two blue wires coming out of two weird looking connectors. I had no idea where these were supposed to connect to, then I remembered that a year or so earlier, I had been working on carving wood handgrips for the joysticks and Peter had supplied me with blue wire for the PTT switches. Could this be a coincidence? Nope. It was all part of the plan. Eventually I found a black box with two cables coming out the sides that seemed to match the two weird looking connectors. Could these have something to do with the PTT switches? The wire was exactly the same blue and contained exactly the same two wires inside the blue sheathing. What else was coming out of the black box? There was another cable with red and black wires inside that terminated in another unique connector. Sure enough, coming out of the back of the instrument panel was a cable with black and red wires inside that terminated in a socket that matched the unique connector and nothing else. Carefully wrapped around this cable was a label that read “RADIO.” This was clearly Peter’s way of telling us that the radio was already wired into the panel, ready to be connected to the black box, which itself had already been wired for the headsets and PTTs for pilot and passenger.
Mysteries solved! We now knew where the black box belonged, what it connected to, and what all the weird connectors were for. We can continue on with more labelling and making the necessary connections to get everything on the panel lighting up before we mount the wings and start up the engine. Wire colours, unique and unusual connectors all ensured that the remaining work could only be assembled one way. Anyone at any time would be able to figure out the next steps, and it was pretty much idiot proof, just what I needed!
Not only can we leave written notes, we can also try to make our work obvious. Homebuilt aircraft in the past have been often built as a unique piece, an expression of the builder. There is a great deal of pride in knowing that we build it and we know how to fix it. However, that shouldn’t mean that no one else should be able to figure it out. Our finished work, while remaining a labour of love, shouldn’t be a mystery to the world, rather we should make every effort to enlighten the next owner, to even make it easy for them whenever we can. We follow standard practices for riveting, for bolt sizes, and other materials and we should carry that attitude on throughout the project. Anyone, at any time, should be able to pick up where we left off with a minimum of fuss. Personally, I enjoy the puzzle solving part of building an aircraft; in fact, that is what keeps me coming back to the hangar day after day. But not everyone has my mindset, and finding too many puzzles is what can cause a project to become stalled in the hangar or waiting forever to find a buyer. Let’s agree that when the next owner has to delve into our projects, they will take a close look and just say something like, “Nicely done!”