I stopped by my avionics shop over lunch today and picked up the GA 35 antenna for my GTN 635.  Dynon recommends installing any GPS antennas at least 1′ from the ADAHRS, and Garmin recommends installing the GPS antenna with at least 7.5″ ground plane all the way around the antenna.  These two recommendations necessitated moving the antenna behind the F-707 bulkhead.  I fabricated a doubler from 0.040″ aluminum that matches the outline of the antenna and then installed it to the fuselage.

Here’s where the antenna is relative to the aft window.  The ADAHRS is roughly under the aft edge of that piece of paper, putting it roughly 18″ from the GPS antenna.

Afterward, I crimped on a TNC connector and ran the antenna cable along the underside of the upper rib next to the Dynon network cable.

I spent a little time tonight tidying up some wiring runs under the seats.  I installed an adel clamp on the wires to the left of the center tunnel.  I haven’t tightened either of these down fully yet since I want to wait until the GPS antenna cable is adjusted to length and I still need to run the wires for the control sticks.

I installed the adel clamp supporting the wires coming out of the left conduit and added a couple of zip-ties to tie everything together.  It’s amazing how solid these wire bundles become when zip-tied together.

I added an adel clamp to keep the pitot/AOA lines held down to avoid interfering with the aileron push tube.  I might have been able to use a zip-tie base attached with a pop-rivet, but I really don’t want there to be any possibility of anything coming loose around the flight controls.  You can also see at the top of this picture that I took all of the snap bushings out of the forward holes in each seat rib.  I have no idea why Van’s has you drill holes here.  It’s a really poor place to put them since they’d have to snake around the control stick brackets.

I also tidied up the wiring aft of the baggage bulkhead.  Everything is firmly secured and well supported.

I ordered my avionics stack today.  I’m going with a PS Engineering PMA8000BT audio panel and Garmin GTN 635.  I went back and forth about both units a bit.  I was originally going to install the PMA5000EX audio panel, but ended up deciding the Bluetooth functionality would be worth it for making phone calls and listening to music.  I was also originally planning on installing the GTN 650, but ultimately didn’t think I would use the VOR/Loc/Glideslope functionality much.  Switching to the 635 not only saved me about $1,000, but the unit is 0.8 lbs lighter and I probably saved another several pounds of antennas and wiring (not to mention hours of time that I would have spent hooking up the additional antennas).

With the ELT shelf riveted in, I wanted to finish up all of the tailcone wiring.  One of the final items on the list is the cabin light wiring.  I ran three 22awg wires from the front up through the top of the baggage bulkhead.  This will be inside the cabin frame support and will connect to a small LED spotlight that will have both white and green lights in it (hence the two red wires and one black ground wire).

I then secured all of the wires from the left conduit with an adel clamp on the ELT shelf rib and some zip ties.

I also ran an additional RG-400 cable through the right conduit for the Garmin GTN-635 GPS antenna.  I had originally planned to mount both GPS antennas (the Garmin and the Dynon) under the cowling, but the Garmin install manual stipulates that GPS antennas not be installed closer than 9″ from each other and require a 7.5″ minimum radius ground plane under the antenna.  Though under the cowling would likely work just fine most of the time (and I’m still going to mount the Dynon antenna there), I want the highest possible antenna performance for my primary IFR navigator.

I finished all of the wiring runs up to the area behind the subpanel, though the cabin light ground is the only wire I could actually hook up to anything.

With the final trimming of the cowl complete, I pulled the forward top skin off so that I could do some further wiring.  All of the exterior light wires have been coiled up on the cabin floor for the last couple of weeks.  With access to the VP-X again, I finished running all the wiring runs.  I’m probably done with 80% of the load wiring at this point.  I mostly just have the avionics left to do.

I also ran the static tubing up behind the panel so that it can be plumbed to the alt-static switch.

It comes up the firewall with the other wires and then heads over to the left side of the plane and then aft to the instrument panel.