Tag: Drilling

Wings, components progress

Right wingtip drilled to wing, outboard edge sanded smooth, and trailing edge trimmed to match the aileron.

Right wingtip drilled for nutplates.

Archer antenna mounting underway.

Archer antenna drilled to right wingtip in preparation for nutplates.

Right wingtip nutplates clecoed in place. As can be readily seen in this view, I’m seven nutplates short. Thanks, Van’s! I’m now awaiting yet another delivery from Aircraft Spruce.

On the bright side, I took advantage of this shipment to order the steel fittings for the engine. Van’s ships aluminum fittings with their FWF kit and I’m a great believer in steel, especially for the larger fittings used in the engine case for the oil lines and, of course, in the oil cooler.

Wings, fuselage mounting continued…

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…

Wings, fuselage mounting progress

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.