Re: Garmin Support Available For Team Kitfox!
Hello Justin - it's great to find Garmin's awesome Customer Support connecting with the homebuilt community like this – thank you!
I'm some way off wiring my Kitfox Series 7 SS build, but knowing how long aircraft re-wire jobs can take* I''d like to make a start on the planning and drawing a wiring diagram.
* I've rewired three homebuilt aircraft of varying complexity over the years. I'm also very familiar with some of Garmin Avionics' excellent design features and best practices after installing a few 430/530's, way back when; I especially appreciated the provision of earth bus blocks on equipment connectors – and plenty of signal-earth pins in comms equipment connectors! After wiring a variety of other manufacturer's equipment, wiring Garmin radio/audio equipment is just a dream!
Regarding the design of G3X-based installations for the Kitfox:
Does Garmin offer any top-level electrical system architecture design guidance or recommendations, in order to ensure a reliable, fault-tolerant, EMI (radio interference) noise-free flying experience?
I'm especially interested in learning about any the design philosophy around the need for an avionics master switch and/or other emer-electrical system switches. Bob Nuckolls (AeroElectricConnection.com, ex-Ratheon engineer, etc, etc) who you might know of, strongly advocates against fitting an avionics master as doing so (generally speaking) only introduces another single-point failure-mode, rather than improving overall electrical system reliability.
Lastly, having used AutoCAD and KiCAD over the years, for creating aircraft wiring diagrams (and learning all the short-comings of those packages for wire-diagramming in the process) do you or any the other members here have any recommendations for free open source software (FOSS) for electrical diagramming? I'm otherwise inclined to give the 'excellent but a little quirky' QelectroTech package a go for my Kitfox (its output quality is top-notch, but component design is currently a little quirky). Which ever FOSS diagramming tool I use, I intend making the various equipment diagrams I create available as a library of components, assuming Garmin would have no objection? On that note, if Garmin has any CSV data available (lists of equipment name vs connector name vs pin numbers vs pin function) for any or all its avionic equipment, that would be a huge help and head-start! Some time ago I made a CSV to KiCAD component converter script and should be able to adapt it to similarly create QElectroTech components from CSV data.
Thanks for any insight or info,
Hamish
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