Pitot Controller and Mount Installation

I took the skins off the left wing today and decided I was going to finalize the OAT and pitot installation as much as I could today. I drilled the hole where the original pitot tube was to be installed but unfortunately I did not drill it to the right size. I drilled it to the size of the pitot hardware and not the OAT probe. I have some washers right now that will sandwich over the hole but I’ve ordered a sleeve as well so that it will keep everything centered and hopefully I can even press fit it in to the spot so that I can get rid of the washers all together. It is only 1/8 of an inch larger so the edges of the OAT sensor and the nut cover it all and give perches but I really want that sleeve. If that doesn’t work I’ll just use the washers as this is a fairly small probe which won’t take alot of wind force as it is. It is just unfortunately that I did not live by the motto of measure twice cut once.

After that I decided I was going to get the pitot cabling fixed that I had botched up a couple of months ago. Unfortunately the local aircraft hardware supply did not have the right spade connectors. They ordered them and should show up Monday. I can then recrimp these wires and it will be fixed.

I decided to up the rivet hole that is mounting the rear side of the pitot mast/mount to a -4 rivet to give it extra strength which didn’t take much time to do. I then did all of the work to mount the controller box which actually wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be.

Oh and I forgot to mention that earlier in the day while I was on conference calls I flared the ends of the pitot tubes and got everything prepped there. I also added the union hardware on to the pitot lines that were already in the wings from previous work I had done.

I wrapped up the day by drilling the holes for the pitot into the mast/mount. I’ll have to get hardware for this tomorrow as well as I thought I had gotten some when I purchased this but I forget that almost all of the Garmin stuff does not come with any hardware and you have to provide it.