And so I started early to prime the wingtip skin and the flaperon and landing light parts that I had prepped before. Because of the flaperon ribs being rather finicky this priming session took two hours to be completed.
Here's the wingtip skin getting a tan...
... and the small parts drying on the spraying rack.
And then when the priming was done and I had given the parts a little time to dry I needed to know if the holes I drilled yesterday were any good for the light installation, so I clecoed the landing light ribs in to see if I needed to do any fluting on them to match them with the holes as suggested by the manual.
Wow, I was impressed and a little proud of myself. Nothing had to get fluted whatsoever, everything just fitted in right away. So out came the parts again and the doublers were riveted on and the ground wire was manufactured. Nothing new in that department. The landing light cables were crimped with Molex pins and here I discovered an issue!
The Molex pins are too big for the tiny little cables that come out of the LL-200. They are so ridiculously thin that the pins fall off after crimping with the recommended A and B positions on the crimping pliers. I had to flat crimp the wires to keep them on the pins and so I decided to back this "crimp" up by soldering the wires to the pins as well. I hope this was good enough to make this a reliable connection. The pins were part of the LL-200 provided by AeroLeds, so it's not Van's fault but sure a bad impression that AeroLeds left with me.
And so it was time to put everything together and do the actual installation. I pulled the nav light wire out and rerouted it through the two new snap bushings that are part of the landing light ribs before putting the ribs in. I figured that be easier. Actually now that I've done it (with the wingtip still open), I suggest anybody doing this installation on a fully closed wing should follow Van's suggestion for people with large hands and put everything together outside of the wing. This should limit the aggravation factor dramatically!
Then I remembered that I hadn't installed the terminal bracket yet and the manual was asking me to shorten the wires for the landing light, so I thought I should rather make sure that the wiring is installed as it will be used later before cuting anything too short. So, on went the bracket.
And finally the new ribs and the wiring got installed in the cutout.
This shot shows better how the nav light wire routes through the new snap bushings.
Before finally installing the light I hooked it up and tried it with a battery using the newly installed terminal bracket to make sure I had the wiring correct.
After installing this light mainly through the wingtip lightening holes (am I glad I didn't close that up yet!), the moment of thruth was there!
The flash went off but you can still see the lights are on. It's not that bright by the way. I would have expected a little bit more lux if you consider what this lighting package costs...
Here's another shot with the flash off:
Oh, you might have noticed that I jumped over the section of trimming and drilling the plexiglas cover for the light. Somehow I got carried away as I wanted to see if the ribs matched the holes I drilled. Now I will have to go back to that and also reset the light to its rear most position to make some room for the dimpling and trimming the glass to size.
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