Today I started out spending about 30-45 minutes per wing shaping the leading edge light pocket and also trimming down the light lenses on the top and bottom edges to get the respective lenses to sit flush within the wing light pocket/lens cutout.  I wasn’t overly thrilled about having to take the Fein saw to the lenses again, but it was the only way to get them to fit flush without making the light pockets deeper than they already were.

I started on the right wing (pic 1) and finished up on the left (pic 2).

I ran string across the back of rudders to create a reference line 90° to the centerline of the plane.  Then, using a large T-square up against the string, I marked parallel to that line to obtain the aft pocket wall, again 90° perpendicular to aircraft centerline (on green tape).

By shaping and aligning the light pocket internal aft wall this way, then by mounting the light parallel to the internal aft wall automatically gets you a straight, forward facing light.  That being said, I’ll still probably angle the light in a few degrees in the aim (literally, pardon the pun!) to get the beams to touch 150-200′ in front of the plane.

Again, I did this on both the right (pic 1) and left (pic 2) wings [you can just barely see the string at the top of pic #1].

I then dug the foam out of the right wing leading edge light pocket and shaped it in prep for glass.  Note that the dark spot in inboard corner is the wing cable conduit, and this will be the spot where this wing leading edge light’s wires will enter the cable conduit.  I’ll note that being forward of and leaving the vast majority of the wing cable conduit hidden is NOT how Nick Ugolini does his version of these wing lights, but rather he makes the pocket deeper and exposes the entire cable conduit and runs the cables behind the light bracket.  This results in a hole on each side wall of the pocket where the conduit enters one side, and exits the other (or obviously vise versa, you get my point).

This little inboard corner conduit access/not exposing the majority of the conduit trick is one I picked up from the Cozy Girrrls during our discussion.  I’ll further note that it does make the placement of the 3 light bracket standoffs a little trickier, since that conduit needs to be avoided… so some educated guessing comes into play to not block off that cable conduit whilst installing the light bracket!

To verify my wing light pocket aft wall during foam removal and shaping, I simply used the tip of my LED shop light to shine it through the fiberglass wing skin and Voila… reference position known!

I then repeated the process on the left wing leading edge light pocket.  Now, I’ll again note that I’m clearing the foam out of these light pockets by hand using a cheap box cutting razor knife (narrow long blade) and a hacksaw blade.  I’m almost “shaving” the surface of the foam by scraping it as to have no major chunks break out past the dimensions, and to not overshoot my pocket dimensions.  Needless to say, it took a good little bit of time on both sides to clear these pockets.  And again, you can see the cable conduit peaking out in the inboard corner of the pocket.

I also again employed my shop LED light tip trick to verify the aft wall depth as compared to my 90°-to-AC-centerline reference line up top on the green tape.

Besides annotating a bunch of notes regarding upcoming tasks regarding these wing leading edge lights, my last official act of the evening was simply getting a visual on how the actual light assemble will look once mounted inside my left wing leading edge light pocket.  I think we’re getting there!

…. slowly but surely.  Pushing onward!