Battery and contactor mounting

I attached the two battery boxes together and to the bellcrank mount:

Battery boxes attached to each other

Battery boxes attached to each other with double-flush rivets, and to the bellcrank mount with flush rivets

Battery boxes attached in place with battery mockup

Battery boxes attached in place with battery mockup

For the contactors, I wanted to extend the OP-48 AHRS support bracket to span both ribs:

Original OP-48 shelf plus a paper extension for taking measurements

It took a bit of measurement and fine-tuning to get the holes in the right positions:

Sketch of the modeled shelf's web with measured hole positions

Rendering of the modeled shelf

Before sending this for fabrication, I 3D printed a thin version of it to confirm the layout:

3D printed shelf model

3D printed shelf model screwed in place

With just a few minor adjustments, I had the part laser-cut and CNC-bent in aluminum, and it fit pretty well:

Aluminum shelf screwed in place

Only exception was that the aft flange was too far aft (I tried to adjust both flanges slightly to not make the fit so tight as it was before, but clearly I adjusted too much, so I had to make a shim:

Shim for making aft flange of the shelf flush with the bulkhead

For connecting the 3 contactors (one for each battery and one for external power), I used a copper bar, which also held them in relative position for match-drilling the attachment holes into the shelf:

Copper bar with 5/16" holes for contactors

Contactors connected by copper bar, holding relative position

Contactors with attachment holes match-drilled in place

Last but not least, I cut a smaller right-side shelf for the GTS800 and WX500 (which I'll post about on my next avionics update).

Next on section 10 is just priming these parts, installing nutplates, and final-installing the relays and batteries in place.

Time lapse:


Total tailcone rivets: 1882
Total tailcone time: 238.6h

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