Lindy
11/8/2009
Today was a truly awesome weather day for November in Illinois! 72 degrees, and sunny! I had the hangar door open, and with a light breeze, it was perfect! This morning I started on the rudder bottom cap. The first thing to do was to figure out where to cut off the top part of it to clear the tailwheel spring. After that was done with the Dremel, I marked the hole locations for the blind rivets that will be used to install it. In this pic, you can see how much of the front of the cap I cut away. I may not be done yet either...gotta figure the best way to bring the wires in still.
Then I marked the holes for the strobe/tail light unit. I bought a Kuntzleman strobe/tail light combo with LED's used as the tail lights, and a standard strobe tube. That is probably the best deal out there today without going full LED for strobes. That unit was $142 shipped, with all wiring and fasteners, but no power supply...not needed since I'll run the strobe right in to the 606X power supply, and the LED's will hook up with the wing LED's in the center tunnel for power.
Cut ahead another hour or so, and the unit it installed. I had to drill holes for the nuts on the inside for them to fit. I will epoxy over those later to hold them in place...sort of a built in plate nut.
Something I've learned about fiberglass...just when you think you are done working a part, you aren't. And if you think the next cut or fill is the last fill, you're wrong. I hate fiberglass.
Running the wires to the tail was a pain. I have conduit and snap bushings already in place, but of course since the airplane is basically a complete airframe, it's very difficult to gain enough access at the last three bulkheads to get the wires thru. It sucked, and my forearms are nice and sore now. Anyway, here's the strobe and light wires coming thru the 712 bulkhead. Shoulda just left all this crap in there when I had it in there!!! I'm a bonehead.
After that was done, I drilled the bottom cap to the tabs, and cleco'd it in place.
And here you can see how much I cut away from the cap to ensure it always clears the tailwheel spring. It may be a bit too much, but at least I know for sure.
It took a long time to get all of this to this point today, but I think it's downhill from here as far as this stuff goes now.
5.0 hours