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How far to Carry Shielded wires

rockitdoc

Well Known Member
Sponsor
I have AeroLEDs strobes in my wingtips. They recommended shielding the wires from the wingtip to the wing root, which I did. But, I ran the shielded wires in the wing to the connector at the wing root/fuse supplied with the Van's harness. I am not sure the wires from the wing root to the panel in the Van's harness are shielded. Will this be a problem? I ask because the wires in the harness from Van's to the strobe were not shielded. So, are the shielded wires I installed just overkill or do they actually have to be shielded all the way to the panel?

Also, there is an electronic filter in the left wing to protect the ADAHRS kit from strobe interference. Was this included because of the lack of shielding in the Van's strobe harness? If so, do I need it since my strobe wiring is shielded?

Lot of questions, I know, but this is an area I am most uncomfortable with.
 
Question Answered

Upon review of the plans, it appears the three wires from the strobes are shielded at the wing root/fuse back to the panel, so question has been answered, I hope. Although, this begs the question: why are these wires not shielded from the wing root to the strobes?
 
You have identified example of the "one size fits all" Van's wiring kits.

The AeroLED nav/strobes provide little to no RFI if installed correctly. The easiest way to do this is use of a three #20 conductor shielded wire from the nav/strobe to the power switch. I'd just run the wire and not use the clunky wing root molex connectors that come with the RV-14 kit.

The wire connectors are:
- Nav power
- Strobe power
- Strobe sync
- Common ground provided by the shield

I took the extra step to add a backing plate under the nav/strobe. The nav/strobe ground is made as short as possible and connects to it, along with the power cable shield, using one of the three mounting screws. This was a fix done on an older version of these nav/strobes - probably not needed now, but easy to do and I don't want to change when something works. The objective is to provide ground to the nav/strobe case when not mounted on aluminum - like an RV wingtip.

Photo is from 2011, before FlyLed landing lights installed.

Wired two RVs like this, all quiet in the headset.

Side note - use of filters to eliminate RFI problems is the last resort, not the first.

Carl
AEROLED-RFI-fix.jpg
 
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