Construction Blog and Builder's Resource
Firewall-mounted goodies beginning to come together.
Master relay, starter solenoid, and assorted wiring in place.
Sender manifold with attached oil & fuel pressure sensors along with the fuel pressure hose.
Manifold pressure sensor mounted and awaiting connection.
Left wingtip nav light installed.
Left wingtip test fit again – this time to see if my screw countersinks fit the skin dimples. Success!
Wingtip rib installation underway.
Left wingtip ready to mount on the wing.
Left wingtip mounted for good (hopefully) and ready for flight.
Left wingtip mounted for good (hopefully) and ready for flight.
Battery, ground strap, and starter relay power cable installed.
Wingtip nutplate installation in process. Lots of holes to drill and countersink prior to riveting nutplates in place.
With all of the nutplates riveted, I installed the nav light mount seen here.
Unfortunately, I then discovered that the electrical connector half (of the awful, open-barrel “Molex” type) received with the wing kit last summer and installed back when I built the wing doesn’t match the connectors included with the very nice AeroLED nav lights. A typical Van’s situation.
Rather than wait for a matching connector half to arrive, I think I’ll trash the original Molex half and go with the matching bits from the nav light box. A project for tomorrow…
Left wingtip smoothed and trailing edge trimmed to match aileron.
Nav light lens trimmed to fit the wingtip. This was an iterative process and is definitely not an absolutely perfect fit (the shape of the molded lens is not remotely a perfect match for the wingtip recess), but is simply ‘good enough’. Moving on…
Wingtip attach holes drilled out to #27.
Nav light template taped to wingtip for drilling.
Nav light holes drilled and ready for nav light install.
Unfortunately, the very expensive nav lights don’t come with the simple #6 screws, washers, and nuts required to mount them. Thanks, Van’s. Now I’ll be waiting for the project’s 1000th Aircraft Spruce delivery. Awesome.
