Today was a heavy machining day in that I did 4 individual jobs to mill a pair of fuel cap retaining tabs (below) and a pair of wing leading edge light brackets (further below), both pairs newer and improved versions than the previous ones I made.

Although I machined the light brackets first, I didn’t get any action shots on the mill like I did with the fuel cap tabs, so I’m showing those first.

Here’s the pair of new and improved fuel cap retaining tabs, used primarily as a safety feature to ensure an unchecked/unfastened gas cap doesn’t fly off the strake and into the prop.  I machined the bottom one out of stock that was about 0.05″ smaller than my design, simply because I don’t want to waste any (now) expensive aluminum if I can compromise a hair on a self-generated design.  Thus, it looks a scant bit different (it’s also at a different angle) than the top one.

Here is a collective shot of all my machining tasks of the day… each job going fairly well, some better than others (wink).

It took me about 20 minutes to clean up each wing light bracket, after which I mounted the bracket support standoffs to the bracket.  The first pic is of the CAD diagram I got from Nick Ugolini with the dimensions for creating a wing leading edge light.  I colored in the standoffs and bracket in pencil (pic 1) and then did my best to show that my work here is spot on dimension-wise as it sits atop the diagram (pic 2).

I spent well over an hour assessing and double-checking my light position, as well as using my drilling jig (sorry, no pic of that) to drill out the 3 standoff holes in the aft wall of the left wing leading edge light.  I then test fit the light again, and although snug, this time around it fits and is definitely workable.

I cleaned and prepped the standoff holes before cleaning and prepping the standoffs for flox and micro, which I then worked over the next 30 minutes.

Here we have the left wing leading edge light bracket attached to the 3 support standoffs which are floxed/micro’d into their respective holes in the aft wall of the light pocket.  On the bottom left you can see a small block of foam, which is a 1.2″ spacer between aft wall and bracket.

I then left the standoffs to cure overnight and called it a night.

Pushing forward!