March 12, 2006

Back from vacation, it’s been a while since I saw the plane! Something cool to do today would be to put in the landing and taxi lights. Today was a lovely warm day. It got up to 64 degrees F, which is pretty nice for Michigan in March! Unfortunately, there is a down side. The floor in the hangar is epoxy, and when it’s been cold for a while, the floor is freezing cold, and the warm air of spring arrives. Guess what happens… Tons of water condenses on the floor, and I have a mini flood on my hands. So today, I spent a good time squeegeeing out the water. Took out a chunk of aeroplane time.

Anyway, I dug out the template for the light holes in the leading edges, and stuck them to the wings. I marked the shape on each wing, and then started cutting with the cut off wheel. This was quite nerve wracking, as these are perfectly good wings ate the moment, and I don’t want to slip!

The duckworks instructins have you mount the ballast on the light retainer. I decided it’d be better on the wingtip. I just didn’t want to see screw heads through the wing lens. Hopefully, it won’t be too noisey for the nav antenna, although, you don’t really use these lights away from the airport much.

It works! It’s pretty bright too! I need to paint all these parts grey before I put them inside the wing. It started to turn colder again, so I didn’t get chance to do the plexi glass lenses. I don’t want to risk cracking them, so I’ll just be patient and wait.