Hrs: 8

Conduit or not?

I think it’s illogical to straps wires in the wings that never can be accessed anymore and therefore I’m thinking about using conduit in the wing, the same I did in the vertical- and horizontal stabiliser.

Standard procedure of TAF is to fix the wires for the strobes, landing- and taxi lights with tie-raps.
But the area between ribs 7-8 and the area between ribs 1-4 cannot be access anymore when the wings are closed.
What about maintenance like replacing or exchanging wires???

For the left wing I need wires for:
– nav lights in wing tip
– landing- and taxi lights
– pitot heat

For the nav lights I can use the same cable as for the rudder strobe light: M27500-20TG4T14.

I’m not yet sure which landing/taxi lights I’ll buy, there are multiple options ranged from 35$ to 750$ and more (I need 4):
Kuntzleman this is what TAF uses and is easy to mount because TAF ships brackes for these lights
Aveo Altas 10
Aeroleds Sunspot 36
Amazon inspired after seeing this video on YouTube

Since the LED light marked is changing fast I will wait until the airplane is ready and buy then landing- and taxi lights that are a good choice at that time.
The LED lights up to 500$ draw current varies from 1.5 to 3,5 A, based on the following chart I will need AWG18 wire.

I prefer to use shielded Tefzel wire, so there are 2 options:
– 2 cables with 2 cores: M27500-18TG2T14 (standard available at Aircraft Spruce)
– 1 cable with 4 cores: M27500-18TG4T14 (difficult to buy and expensive to ship to The Netherlands via WireMasters)

For the pitot heat I will use AWG14 wire, shielded is not needed here but twisting the wires for limiting magnetic field is a good practice.

I played around with conduit I have left from the empennage.

The 10 mm conduit could go in the stringer, but not all cables fit in:

One size bigger (13 mm) conduit will rub against the rivets in the stringer, so maybe I will run 2 conduits for the lights and 1 for the pitot heat.

I can use one existing 12 mm hole for the conduit with the cable of the pitot heat and one 16 mm conduit from the larger (18 mm) hole in rib 1 to the first access panel below rib 12 and then continue with two 10 mm conduits in the stringers for the nav, landing- and taxi lights.

With standoffs I can route the wire through the lightening holes without drilling new holes:

This is just a test, I ordered different size conduits with adapters from Conrad, when they arrive I figure out a final solution.