Luigi Aldini

Enrico Bagnoli is checking the original Falco gear retraction motors. Enrico is an electrical engineer and one of my best friends. He's an airplane and glider pilot, and we have always bought gliders together since 1982. Could we make the Falco without Enrico? Surely not, and I can tell you that he's enjoying this time-consuming work a lot! 

The flap motor and the relays compartment. Actually we bought this motor with screw from an aeronautical salvage shop. We thought it could be useful for the purpose, and , in fact, it's perfect. We couldn't use the original system since the motor, that is the same one of the landing gear, is not easy to find.

This fact required some minor modifications.The relays are used also for the landing gear.

Enrico at work, soldering the wires to the connectors. We have already positioned in the airplane the plastic tubing that contain the electrical wires.

The wires are passed through some plastic tubes, so that we can easily add or remove them. As you can see they pass just below the center console and the wires are soldered to a couple of Bendix connectors that go directly to the instrument panel. The black wires are the antennas and the aluminum tubes are used for the fuel system as well as for the smoke system. There are also the pitot lines and ELT controls cables.

The tubes pass below the cabin floor and through a hole in the spar. Other lines comes fron the wing, and it's possible to see the lower part of the control stick with the lever for the elevator. At this stage we have still to protect the aluminum tubes so that they don't touch with each other.

While we decided to start all the systems when the fuselage was not even on the jig, we had to think at the systems. It's a long task, and so to have clearer ideas Davide made this simple scheme to see the electrical components of the airplane. This has proved to be very useful.