It was a bit of a slow week from a project perspective. I spent some more time with Terry, watching two DVDs, etc. The project took a bit of a hit, but we need to spend some time together before I go into major travel mode again.

Spring has definitely sprung - we had a very nice weekend, and I opened the garage door for the first time this year. The nice weather made it a lot more pleasant to be working in the garage, but I felt I needed to clean it up a bit, as it looks a disaster area from outside.

Yesterday I finally finished off the alternate air door installation. Van's design is very simple, light and cheap. It is a much better design than I was thinking of doing. I just have to come up with a label for the knob on the push-pull Bowden cable.

Today I ran the wires and installed the receptacle for a cockpit aux power plug. I'll use it to provide charging power for my iPod, a handheld GPS, handheld COM, and the laptop that will record flight test data, etc. I've got it wired to the battery bus via a 10 amp fuse. So, it will be live even if the battery master is OFF, which means I can use it to connect a trickle charger if needed. And if I ever have a smoke in the cockpit event and have to kill the battery master, I can use the aux power to help run a handheld COM, etc.

The three large jacks to the right of the aux power plug carry the serial data from the EFIS, Engine Monitor and GNS430 GPS. The little jack allows my iPod to feed music into the intercom. The hole above the aux power receptacle will have a multi-pin plug that will carry various discretes that will also be recorded on the flight test data.

I was in and out of the rear fuselage and cockpit numerous times today, as I ran the wires for the aux power plug from the battery bus next to the battery. My back eventually started complaining, so I downed tools and worked on the flight test program and test card generation program. Things are coming along nicely here, but I still have lots of work to do.