Left top skin, and landing lights

TLDR

• EAA tech counsel visit
• Installed landing lights
• Left skin closed

Details

EAA tech counsel visit

Jason from my EAA chapter came by earlier this week to check out my work. He shared a few tips on solid riveting. In particular, I showed him a smiley face rivet I messed up on the trailing edge of the right wing. We decided that it’s not worth drilling out and redo, because there is a chance I’d make the situation worse. That sounds good to me. I will probably leave it along.

We discussed painting and priming. One thing I’ve always confused is that why I need to scuff the inner material if I don’t prime. The probable answer is that I don’t need to. Scuffing will increase the surface area. Even though the material (6061-T6) is corrosion resistent, but there is no reason to increase the chance for corrosion. So I will stop scuffing internal parts going forward. I will just clean with either acetone of alcohol and wipe them off.

We also discussed wire planning. For example, I used a 4.8 rivet on an adel clamp to secure the wiring for pitot tube. It would be easier to service if I have used a rivnut. That’s a good point. I will think about servicibility in the future for parts in close quarters.

Landing lights

The back ordered landing light and wing tips arrived this week. I finally have all the parts to fully close the wing.

Last night I spent an hour or so to connect the landing and taxi lights.

The kit came with bullet terminal. I replaced with heatshrink ring terminal to fit the screws on the lights.

I did not find the spring particularly difficult to install to the wing ribs, probably because I have not installed rib 14 yet, so there was a lot of space for me to wiggle around. The wiring was pretty straightforward. I tested with 12v battery and they worked.

Onto the rib

Prepared the wire

Connected to the lights

Sat into the wing

View from behind

Left skin closed

After checking everything looked good, I closed the top skin on the left wing. It’s a super tedious process, but nothing difficult. It took me about 3-4 hours to finish the job. The wing root and tip are still balanced and aligned before and after riveting.

Before riveting

Perfectly level in relation to the wing tip

And done

Video

Here is a video summary of the work in the past week or so.