Propulsion Advances.

Diversion alert.

My reward for finishing the wings was I could order all the avionics.  This collection of parts is the heart of my airplane, a glass panel display just like the big boys.  I have the radio already and my transponder will be here tomorrow. This EFIS (electronic flight information system) is small enough to fit in a Sonex yet it has an electronic attitude gyroscope package, a solid state magnetic compass, engine monitoring (including Tach, oil temp, oil pressure, cylinder head temps and exhaust gas temps for each cylinder, fuel gauge and fuel flow senders), outside air temp probe, altimeter, airspeed, an interface to the radio allowing the radio to be run from the units database of airports and their frequencies, GPS, moving map with terrain data, attitude and heading display, turn and bank display with slip indicator and believe it or not many more things.

It won’t control the transponder but it has an altitude encoder built in to supply the standalone transponder with altitude data for Mode C operation – which is required within 30 miles of O’Hare.

Looks like fun, but after about an hour of playing with all the pieces I reluctantly put it away and got back to engine work.

The engine assembly video sure left a lot out, no mention of all the stud cutting and other gotchas I have had along the way. In the video they get to this part and they say, lube both ends of the push rods and drop them in and put on the rocker assembly.  I didn’t know I had to measure each side and then cut four push rods all to the same length and press on an end piece.

But that’s what I had to do. The fist picture show the tool I use to measure the push rod length (with one already made to size) and the second picture shows the remaining three in progress.