When I was installing the protective white rubber boot over the battery solenoid, I put a little pressure on the terminal I was forcing the rubber boot over. The battery solenoid energized! I found I could energize it by applying up pressure against the terminal from the battery. Definately bad internally. I got a new solenoid from Aerozona Parts but the new solenoid had two small terminals on the front of it instead of one like I had. No problem, you just hook one wire to 12 VDC and one to ground to energize the relay. I hooked the red Vertical power lead to one of the terminals and then ran a line from the other terminal to ground. When I turned on the power, the Vertical Power switch panel gave me a Battery Contactor failure alarm. I disconnected the power lead and applied power directly from the battery and the contactor energized. After a quick call to Marc at Vertical Power, he told me in a polite way that the Vertical power lead supplies ground to the contactor not 12 VDC as it states in the installation manual so I had wired it backwards. :<( This makes sense as you can use the vertical power lead with either the single or dual post battery contactor. I knew this but had forgotten it and felt embarrased that I didnt consult the installation manual again. I was thinking the red lead meant 12 VDC. After wiring the battery solenoid the correct way (run a jumper from the hot batt terminal to one of the small terminals and install the Vertical Power lead on the other terminal), the battery contactor failure alarm went away. It made me more comfortable with the robustness of the VP setup knowing that even though I had installed the wiring backwards, nothing was damaged or messed up. The VP-100 just notified me of the error and once I wired it correctly, everything was ok again. Below is a picture showing the two post battery solenoid. The yellow wire between the two small posts is a diode that helps prolong the life of the solenoid.
I spent a couple of hours this morning going thru the dynon EMS setup menus item by item.
Shown below is the Dynon Install setup menu.
After getting everything mostly programmed, I finished up all of the final little details that needed to be done before the airplane was ready to fly. I had rebuilt the master brake cylinders a couple of weeks ago, but had not added any brake fluid yet. Since the RV-4 brake cylinders are mounted upside down, its a little difficult to get all of the air out of them. I made a pressure bleeder out of a 1/2 gallon pump up sprayer from Ace hardware and some 1/4 tubing.
It took us a long time to get the brakes bled properly. We added the fluid from the bottom of the brake calipers. Next time I am going to try using the pressure bleeder from the top of the master reservoir.
Heres a picture of the Dynon EMS right after first startup. One thing I immediately noticed is that the tach is not working. After thinking about it I realized I had ran a new power lead from VP control unit and had not programmed it yet. So once I profile the power lead correctly in the VP switch panel, the tach should start working. The fuel flow is showing 12.4 gallons an hour. I know that is incorrect for an idle setting so I need to adjust the K factor until the fuel flow is correct.
I also need to drain my fuel from the tanks and then add a gallon at a time while running the Dynon fuel calibration progarm. The picture below shows the fuel screen.
Tomorrow I will work on getting the problems fixed that came up during the startup. One other problem that kept me from flying today is that the Plane Power alternator is not charging so I have to figure out what the problem is with it.
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