Tales from the Crimp: Troubleshooting

You know those late-night and magazine ads that shout, "If I can make a million dollars, you can too!"? I think if Van's Aircraft wants to mirror that, they should use me. "If I can (fill in any particular skill required to build your own airplane here), you can, too." Of course, the jury is still out on whether I can (fill in name of any particular skill required to build your own airplane here).

I've taken this week off from work, ostensibly to work on the RV-7A airplane project and burn up some vacation time (I've maxed out at 8 weeks), but for the most part I've been messing around with wires to make the wiring harness for the ICOM A210 radio and the PS Engineering PM1000II. So far, I think the electrons are disagreeing with each other.

I'm pretty sure I'm not the stupidest person ever to try to build an airplane, but I am sure if I can build one, anyone can. And so, for those people who will be reading this a year, 10 years, 20 years from now, I've made yet another video to let you know that, no, you're not the first person to feel like the only idiot who tried.



If you'd like to follow along, here's the PM1000II schematic. Here's the ICOM A210 manual.

Update 9:58 a.m. 11/25 - Upon further review, pins 25 & 24 are not showing continuity. The test leads were hitting the housing. Still troubleshooting.

Update 6:37 p.m. 11/25 - Update. Took the harness down to Steinair, where Mike Hilger performed his magic diagnosis and -- what? -- it appears to work normally. Yeah, we still had the "problem" with the "not quite green" light. But we attached an antenna and it transmitted and received normally.

Many thanks to Mike and also to Stein, who gave me a Christmas present -- some coax antenna cable.