Apr 11, 2024     Landing light lenses - (2 hours)       Category: Lighting

My wife and daughter were both working Sun n Fun this year, so we took a few days prior and went to Disney. Fun times, but I was beat when I got home. I'm evidently too old for that much nonstop fun, because I developed a cold the next day as well.

The landing light lenses were fit a few years ago when I was working on the wings and have been on the shelf ever since. That was long enough for the blue painters tape I had protected them with to leave a bit of residue when I peeled it off last week. Today I took them home, got all the goo off with mineral spirits, then gave them a good wash in the kitchen sink with some Dawn to get rid of the mineral spirit residue.

eeze peezee

  Feb 08, 2024     landing lights - (8 hours)       Category: Lighting

Way back when I first started this project with purchased wings, I built landing light mounts and prepped them for the FlyLED setup. This week, I got that stuff off the shelf and actually got it installed.

With this setup, the wire attachment at the actual fixtures is kind of tight. Also the lights are too big to fit in through a lightening hole from behind. You pretty much have to feed them in through the leading edge cutout, then maneuver the mounting brackets in through the same hole, then mount the brackets, then attach the light boards to the brackets.

All that said to explain why I installed long leads from the light unit and put a plug in at the outboard wing rib.The leads have black snakeskin wire sleeve over them for some abrasion resistance and are secured so that they won't chafe as they snake through there. It's quite common to use molex connectors for stuff like this, but I was hoping for something a bit more moisture resistant so I've gone with Deutch wedge loc environmental connectors. While note truly waterproof, they have rubber gaskets at both the back shell and the mating surfaces. I left enough service loop at the wingtip that if they turn out to not be robust enough for this application I can replace them on down the road.

One set of wires has to come out of the face of the unit, so it goes up over the top of the bracket before it travels aft. I secured it with a blob of clear E1000 where it goes over the bracket so that vibration won't cut through.

The grounds for this are terminated locally at the outboard wing root via a -3 bolt through a tooling hole. After bond brushing this area I alodined it with a bonderite stick. On the L/H side the ground wire from the pitot heater terminates at the same bolt.

You never know what future upgrades may be available, but just in case, I upped the gauge of all these wires. Landing lights are 16 gauge for a 3 amp draw power side, taxi lights are a 18 gauge for a 1 amp draw per side. They come together in the floor under the pax seat so that 16 gauge wire is actually pulling 6 amps for about 6 feet, which is well below its capacity.

I tightened up all the wire routing under the floor as well, sir everything is permanently routed and secured in taht area unless something comes up that I haven't thought about

  Dec 01, 2022     Nav Lights - (4 hours)       Category: Lighting

Wow, It's been a while. Shortly after my last entry I woke up with my shoulder blown out. I think I slept on it wrong and an old injury flared up. Part of the treatment for that was no heavy lifting or other strenuous activity for a couple of weeks. I'm also giving in and going to P.T. to try to deal with this once and for all. That, coupled with Thanksgiving, family stuff etc. means that it's been about 3 weeks since I did any meaningful work in the shop.

Getting back in the saddle, I only had about 1/2 a day before leaving on a trip, so I knocked out something I've been meaning to finish up for a while; Installed the nav lights and lenses in the wingtips, then took the tips to the hangar and clecoed them to the wings. This gets them out from underfoot and hopefully will keep them from pooching out around the edges again.

A couple of years ago I picked up these RV9 FlyLed lights used on VAF. The lighting coves for the 9 wingtips are different that the 7 but I got them on the cheap and was pretty sure I could make them work. You will notice that the two sections don't meet in the jeep of the bend, but I dealt with that by putting a strip of reflective tape in the gap. Looks like it was supposed to be that way and should help make those strobes obnoxiously bright.

This will get me in teh air and save a little $ but if I decide it looks a little to hillbilly, I can still go back and replace them with new RV7 lights without much trouble.

  Sep 07, 2022     Baggage compartment lights - (2 hours)       Category: Lighting

I've got 3 rotary potentiometers wired into the GAD27 to control cabin lights. The plan is for one of them to control baggage compartment lighting and the other two to control a white light strip and a blue light strip under the glare shield.

I had previously run the output for one of these pots from the gad 27 via aux connector 2 pins 3 & 6 aft with the wire run for the flap motor and position indicator.
Since I'm cleaning up and securing that area, this was teh next logical thing to take today.

The light strip that I got from I think Steinair for this application is 3' long, but can be cut every 4" or so. there are helpful cut lines marked right on the face of the strip and you can literally cut it with scissors.

I ended up cutting about 4" or so off of the end to make it fit where I wanted. I'm not sure if it's possible for the cut end to short out, but I covered it with heat shrink to make sure.

Positioned the wiring with stick on 3m mounts. I didn't use and additional adhesive on them, since they really aren't that critical. If they ever do let go, I'll glue them back up with E6000, or something.

The light strip has a peel and stick backing which appears to just be 3m VRB tape. It wasn't very confidence inspiring in it's level of stickiness, so I decided to help it along. I used several strips of heavy duty duct tape to make sure it didn't go anywhere immediately. That's the yellow stuff you can see in a couple of the pictures below. Specifically, I got it as a promotion from the company that makes soft tops for jeep wranglers. It's a heavy duty repair tape, but I just used it because it' what I had on hand.

After that, I applied a good dollop of E6000 about every 6 inches or so. Don't really see how it's likely to go anywhere once that stuff dries.

This is supposed to be a white light, but it's actually got a little blue hue to it. I like it.

I tucked it up under the cabin crossbar, which is unpainted on the under side. you can see in the picture below that the bare aluminum acts as both a reflector and a lamp shade to keep the light where I want it. You can dim this to whatever value you want via the panel knob, but this is cranked all the way up.

This picture was taken about 6:00 pm, so late afternoon, but still a couple of hours before twilight.

  May 03, 2022     installed dimmer pots - (1 hour)       Category: Lighting

I ordered the dimmer knob kit from stein to control all the interior lighting. I know that I can also do this via the G3X, but for something like this, I just like teh convenience of actual knobs.

The anti-rotation feature on these rotary potentiometers is a little different than most; instead of a washer/keyway setup like a breaker or toggle switch, it's two little tabs at 180* from each other built into the housing of the switch itself. To accommodate this, I fabricated a .032 strap that gets sandwiched between the switches and the back side of the panel. The tabs straddle this strap top and bottom. Much simpler than trying to match drill a plate for the tabs or put dimples in the back of the installed panel.

  Apr 23, 2020     Finished fitting r/h nav light. - (2 hours)       Category: Lighting

Cut the holes to fit the LED boards in the r/h wingtip. I had to modify the outlines I had drawn yesterday, but not much. Busted a dremmel wheel shortly after I started and had to run to Ace for a replacement. Abrasive wheel in a dremmel is the way to go on this.

I think the RV9 boards are going to work okay in the RV7 wingtips. There is a gap between the two boards. but I'll either just paint the whole thing to match the wingtip or go with a strip of reflective tape or something to fill the gap. Saved myself a hundred bucks by buying these used, so it's worth a little manipulation to make them work.

  Apr 22, 2020     r/h wingtip lens - (8 hours)       Category: Lighting

It was raining and about 65 degrees today, so I was a little hesitant to mess with the plexiglas wingtip lens, but it seemed really flexible still so I decided to go for it.
I logged 8 hours for this, but more than 1/2 of that was digging through tubs of old paperwork and running back and forth to my laptop to look stuff up. I never was able to find instructions for these lenses. I searched VAF and found a thread where somebody said written instructions came with the wingtips, but since my wings are used, I didn't get them, or at least can't find them, so I just looked at some threads on VAF to see what most people were doing.

Seems pretty obvious that you just split the blank bubble in half and then trim each half to the recess to make one sense for each wing. I also found an ISO view in Vans supplemental drawing for nav lights where you can see that they put one screw in the corner top & bottom and call it good.

I cut the blank in half with an abrasive wheel on my dremmel to make the rough left and right halves. Held the rough blank on the wingtip and marked it with a sharpie for an initial trim. Turns out that this particular plexi is soft enough that you can cut it with aviation snips with no problem.

I snuck up on this by trimming a little bit at a time and then finished in the belt sander. Worked fine but took a long time. Now that I've done one and know what to expect, on the other wingtip I think I can do pretty much the whole thing with snips and then just dress the edges on the sander.

I've got one area where it doesn't lay quite flat so I decided to "help" with an extra fastener or two. Anyway, it seems kind of lame that this thing is only held on by a couple of #6 countersunk screws. I ended up setting it up for 3 fasteners on top and just 1 in the corner on the bottom, per print. I think it's going to work great, but I discovered that I was out of regular #6 nutplates. I've got a ton of floating ones, but they're expensive to use if you don't have a reason to and I'm saving them for the wingtip attachment screws.

Ordered a bunch of K1000-6 from Airparts and will drive across town and pick them up probably tomorrow.

In the meantime, I checked the FlyLED wingtip lights that I bought used a while back. They work fine, but I didn't get a picture because I was testing them with a 9v battery and a couple of jumper wires and didn't have enough hands.

I had forgotten that they were for an RV9 which has a different shape lighting cove in the wingtip. It took a while to figure out placement for them so they look like they fit right, but I have a plan that I think will work.

In one of the pictures below you can see sharpie lines in the cove where the fiberglass will have to be cut out to allow for the diodes and heat sinks on the back of the LED boards.

  Apr 11, 2020     r/h landing light & wiring - (3 hours)       Category: Lighting

The landing light mount I had previously made from scratch wasn't quite as wide as the space between the ribs. It would have worked if I had bent the flanges out a little bit, but looked kind of cobbled together, so I cut one of the tabs off & made a new one that would make this a little wider.

The one on the l/h wing fits better, but I might do something similar later since I really like how this one turned out.

I goofed around with that for a while, the painted the inside of the wing white with rattle can rustoleum where the landing light goes.

RJ came out to the shop to hang out and helped me pull wiring through the wing.

  Apr 10, 2020     started r/h landing light - (3 hours)       Category: Lighting

As you may recall, the boys had already cut some odd sized holes in the leading edges for home brew landing lights. I'm going with the FlyLed solution, so I needed this to be a more conventional shape.

Basically a duplication of the other wing. The hole is 1" wider than the Duckworks template to catch the 6" wide eclipse that was already there. It also goes 1" further aft on the top side. I still have 5/8" coverage on the sides of the lens and more than 1" on the ends, which according to Duckworks is plenty. Because the span is 6" rather than 5" I figured it couldn't hurt to beef this up a little, so I went with four #6 screws on 2" center spanwise across the top and bottom edges into .032" doublers which are holding the lens in.

Note- the wing is upside down in the attached photos. I've found it a lot easier to build this upside down.

  Apr 02, 2020     pulled wires, tested lights - (6 hours)       Category: Lighting

Tied a foam earplug to a string and sucked it through the l/h wing with a shop vac, then used the string to pull wires.

-Ran two #14 wires for pitot heat and will ground it back in the fuselage.
-Ran a shielded #18 triple to the wingtip for nav/strobe per install instructions

Didn't have any #20 or #22 wire in my stash, so I ordered some from Airparts yesterday. The didn't have any locally but had a couple of spools brought up from their Florida store overnight for me so I drove over to pick it up this afternoon. They are pretty much on lockdown right now due to Covid-19 so I paid for it via cc over the phone and when I got there they had it sitting out on a will call table in the breezeway. Didn't see a living soul. This is the new normal right now :(

-Ran a #20 to the wingtip for landing lights. (Lights draw max 3 amps, so #20 is adequate for 15' run)
-Ran a #22 to wingtip for taxi light (draws 1 amp max, so #22 is adequate for 15' run).
- Landing lights will be locally grounded

Did a couple of molex pins on the pitot heat wiring. The molex crimper I got from SteinAir works ok, but requires two separate actions actions for crimping the wire and the insulation. Got spoiled with the pro level stuff I used at brand C many years ago. Will likely finish that up the wing wiring tomorrow.

Bench tested the landing lights before installing and discovered that one of them works fine but one has a failed LED. I emailed Paul at FlyLed to see how to get a replacement under warranty, but it's a bummer because it's the one I've already installed nutplates on. I can move fwd with the other one, but I hope it's not a hassle to get this one replaced, especially since we've got the Covid-19 quarantine going on right now and it has to come from Australia.

  Mar 31, 2020     continued landing lights - (6 hours)       Category: Lighting

Fabricated the lens backing plates for the l/h wing. Had to custom make these since the opening is wider than the stock ones are designed for. I made these straps from .032 to help stiffen up that area a little bit and elected to go with 4 #6 fasteners on upper & lower surface rather than 3. The spacing works out to be 2 inches. I botched the first set I made by not leaving enough edge distance for the outbd end of the end nut plate. Didn't have any one leg nutplates on hand, and I hate those things anyway, so I just made new ones.

Match drilled the lens, hand countersunk with a dogleg/debur bit, attached the backing plates with double sided foam tape.

Installed nut plates in the 2 outbd ribs. This is how the mounting plate will attach. I dimpled these holes and one of them was a real pain to get to. Countersunk nutplates to match and attached inbd ones with pull fasteners rather than chance beating up the nose rib trying to buck it with limited access.

I also installed nutplates on the FlyLed board and painted the custom mounting plate that I previously fabricated.

Next time I should be able to pull wires and get this thing pretty much wrapped up on the l/h wing.

  Mar 27, 2020     Landing light mount - (8 hours)       Category: Lighting

At this point, everybody in my family except me has had the flu. Kriya was sick a couple of weeks ago, Holly was sick last week, then RJ got sick, puked for 6 hours, and has been sleeping for 2 days. Either I've dodged the bullet or I'm doomed. Time will tell, but as for now I feel fine. Spent pretty much the whole day in the shop today.

Per previous entry, the holes "the boys" had already drilled in the ribs for a home-made mount are in the wrong place for a Duckworks mount, plus their mount wouldn't work for the FlyLed board, so I knew I'd need to make my own. One of the pix below shows where they drilled holes on the end rib, but the black sharpie dots show where they should be for a Duckworks mount. The wing is upside down in the picture.

Dots A & B are staggered about 0.5" which results in the lights being tilted down about 12 degrees. Dot C is "optional" and puts them shining out straight ahead. Seems to me that they should be pointed down due to wanting to see the touchdown zone on final, plus I'm building a tail dragger and don't want them pointing up in the air during taxi & 3 points.

I thought about this a lot and considered shims and other complicated solutions before deciding the simplest solution was to just build my own mounting plates and make the ears long enough that I could stagger the holes in the ears rather than the ribs to achieve the same result. I mocked this up with cardboard to get the dimensions right, and then bent my own mount plates by hand.

All homebuilders know about The Yard store in Wichita, but unless you live here you probably don't know that in addition to the store, they have a second location couple of blocks away just called "The Yard" where they sell bulk surplus tools, aluminum sheets & tube, billet, angle, huge blocks of titanium, military surplus etc. pretty much everything.

They always have aluminum sheet, but it's usually either 4'x 8' or 4' x 12'. They don't have a shear and won't custom cut an order this small, so I've been dropping by any time I was in that part of town, hoping to find an appropriate piece of scrap from one of their custom orders. Earlier this week I hit pay dirt and scored a 24" by 48" chunk of .040 sheet. It's scrap so I don't know what alloy or treatment it is, but it's non structural and I'm going to paint it, so as long as it bends without cracking I didn't care. Especially since they sell it by the pound and I got the whole chunk for $9.

Once I got my dimensions figured out, I cut out sheet stock with snips, bent the flanges with a board and some wood clamps, and finished by hand forming in a vise with an oak block and a dead blow hammer. Came out okay, but it took about an hour and it would have been 5 minutes job if I had a shear and bending brake in the garage :(

Cut a 4" hole in the mount with a fly-cutter and drilled mounting holes in the flanges/ears that correspond with the pre-existing holes in the ribs. The holes in the ears are oversized to 1/4" so with a #8 screw and washer, it will allow for fine-tuning the position before tightening it down. Test fit and everything looks good. Need to finish up by installing nutplates in the ribs and on the LED backplate to mount it to my home made piece of metal art.

Finished off the day by cutting the lens to final size. Centered it on the hole, traced the outline with a felt pen, taped everything up with blue tape to not scratch it. Rough cut on my band saw, shaped final size on the disc sander, and smoother the edges by block sanding with 150 grit sandpaper.

Will layout and drill this to the wing as well as fab the backing straps with nutplates that goes on the back side of the plexi next time.

  Mar 26, 2020     Aeembled Fly LED Landing Lights - (1 hour)       Category: Lighting

Took about a week for these to arrive from Australia. Took about an hour to put them together. The hardest part was installing the tiny little e1 leg nut plates in the taxi light plates. Rummaged through my toolbox and found a small diameter. squeezer set that worked.

Mocked them up in the leading edge left wing. The previous owner had started installing a couple of halogen lights in there and had drilled holes in the ribs to accommodate a non-duckworks (home-made) mount, so I knew I might run into trouble if I tried to use a Duckworks mount. Spent about 12 hours so far building my own mounts that will work with holes that are already there, as well as the non-standard leading edge holes that were already cut. More on that in the next entry.

  Mar 24, 2020     Started Landing lights mounts - (8 hours)       Category: Lighting

So the original owners of these wings had started a home-brew landing light solution back in 2007. 2 halogen lights in a skinny home-made mount and a elliptical hole in the leading edge. 13 years later the FlyLed lights are available so thats the way I'm going.

The existing leading edge holes are 6" wide rather than the 5" that Duckworks has on their template, so I had previously talked to the guys at Duckworks about maybe needing oversize lenses. They said that they thought the standard lenses would fit, since they recommend a min 3/8" overlap on the sides and their lenses are approx 7.5 wise before trimming. I also knew I would have trouble if I tried to use the standard Duckworks mounting plates, since the boys had already drilled holes in the ribs for their home-made solution and there was no way they would line up with where Duckworks wants you to drill them to match their mount.

Ordered just the lenses from Duckworks, and once they arrived, I measured and confirmed 5/8-3/4"overlap on the sides and at least an inch on then ends. Once I was sure I could clean up the existing holes, I cut a new hole, then did a LOT of measuring and CAD (Cardboard Aided Design) to layout my own mounting plates from sheet stock.

It was surprisingly hard to get brave enough to get the snips out and start cutting on this wing, and there was a ton of measuring, staring, drinking coffee, measuring again before I just went for it. Turned out fine.