I spent quite a bit of time at the airport over the last week working on the autopilot installation. I got the pitch servo installed and connected to the elevator bellcrank. The pitch servo wires are nicely secured in place under the floor and up inside the left landing gear box. I took a quick look at the task of connecting all the wires that connect to the autopilot control head today, but discovered I need some more butt splices. I had thought I could cut the Molex pins off the wires for the old Navaid servo, crimp on D-sub pins and insert them in the Trio autopilot connector. But, the wires aren't long enough so I will need to spice them. I've secured the wires in place for now and will finish off the autopilot installation once I acquire the needed connectors.

The autopilot also needs to be fed pitot and static pressures. The pitot and static plumbing was a bit of a mess, so I decided to rip it all out and switch to the neat pitot-static connectors that SteinAir sells. The tubing can be easily removed from these connectors, and they seal well - at that is what everyone tells me. I pulled out the old connectors this morning and put all the new stuff in. At first it leaked like a sieve, but I eventually figured out that I hadn't pushed the tubing far enough into the connectors. The ability to quickly pull out tubing and replace it with a plug really helped when chasing down the leak, as it allowed me to isolate portions of the system to narrow down where the leak was. I eventually found that the leak was in the line to the altimeter, but could't get the leak to stop. I pushed the tubing to the altimeter so hard into its manifold connector that I couldn't get it out again, and broke the manifold when I pulled really, really hard to try to get the tubing out. I hadn't ordered a spare manifold, so I had to swap back to the old plumbing on the right side of the instrument panel.

I'll finish up the autopilot installation after the butt splices and additional pitot-static fittings arrive.