Pitot/AOA bonanza

DRILLING THE AOA LINE HOLES

The QB wings come with one wire run and one tubing run for a pitot tube. These are perfectly sufficient for safe flight and completion of a beautiful RV-10. In addition to these runs, I intend to add one for an AOA system that is already built in to the Garmin system that I have selected. Admittedly, I have little time in aircraft using an AOA system. I would also not consider the time that I do have to be of high quality. My flight training was done in a late 1950s Cessna 150 and I relied on that stall horn to chirp mercilessly while I was floating just a foot or two above the runway, rounding out for a perfect touchdown. I haven’t had the same experience with an AOA system yet, but I’m open to new experiences. So let’s install one. First things first, I built a jig to help me know precisely where to drill the holes in each of the wing ribs.

It is a bit crude, but it certainly gets the job done. This little piece of aluminum was placed in the corner between the uppermost corner of the wing spar and the wing rib. From there, I marked the location of the drill hole and proceeded to drill.

It was difficult to access to the wing ribs near the root of the wing spar. A long 3/8″ drill bit did the trick quite nicely. I squeezed my jig in the tight spaces and made the best lines I could. In the end, the rigidity of the drill bit kept me on task nicely.

I’m pretty pleased with the final result. I have not installed the bushings in each hole yet. I have to order them from Van’s – I forgot to do that before completing this step.

MOUNTING THE GARMIN GAP 26 UNIT

I opted for the heated, regulated pitot tube. This piece of equipment comes with a small box that needs to be mounted on a wing rib just beneath the pitot mast. There has been some debate about the optimum place to put this on many blogs, but I have opted to place mine close to the existing access panel. Mounting it was pretty straightforward. I match drilled the holes on the box with the wing rib and lined it up pretty quickly. The wing ribs are not flat and have some considerable dimensionality to them. In order to level out the GAP 26 unit, I used nylon washers and lock nuts to steady it. Nylon washers are excellent because they have a natural resistance to vibration. Overall, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.

A FINAL THOUGHT ON TIME TRACKING

I have been working on this project now for just under two years. I have come to a couple of significant realizations:

1. It is time to step up my game. I need to increase the amount of time I spend working on the plane. It is really easy to claim that life gets in the way, but it is time to move past that.
2. In order to help with the whole mentality of “how many hours did I put in today” – I have decided to stop tracking the precise number of minutes and hours I spend on the build. The reality of time tracking has only served as a psychological barrier to me, one that I am happy to be free of.