Chapter 19/22 – Light standoffs installed

I started out today on the right wing leading edge light using my new light bracket support standoff drilling jig to drill holes in the aft wall of the light pocket.  The hole on the right side of the pic looks off due to parallax and the angle of the jig hole.  By looking directly into the hole at the proper angle the hole would be aligned to the jig.

After getting the holes drilled and foam cleared out, I cleaned the standoffs with acetone in prep for floxing and microing them into the standoff holes in the aft wall of the right wing LE light pocket.

Here we have the light bracket support standoffs floxed and micro’d into place, with the bracket attached in place.  You can see a couple of foam spacers used to ensure the bracket is as far aft as possible inside the pocket, but not too far back as to mess with the clearance of the installed light.

Before mixing up the epoxy to make the flox and micro for installing the right LE light bracket support standoffs above, I also drilled and prepped the 2 threaded inserts for the top of the left winglet to secure the video camera mount.  I then floxed/micro’d them into place as well.

With a good round of floxing and microing under my belt, I then taped up the left wing LE light pocket edges and surrounding wing for primer and paint.  I sanded down the support standoffs and cleaned them up with acetone.

I then shot the inside of the light pocket with a couple coats of primer.

I then hit it with 3 medium coats of black paint.  After the black paint cured for not quite an hour, I shot it with 2 coats of satin clear.  At least I was shooting for a satin look… looks pretty glossy to me, but we’ll see how it looks tomorrow.

Then, after another 45 minutes or so I pulled all the surrounding tape, paper and plastic away from the left wing leading edge light pocket.  Here are some shots of how it looks currently.  Again, I’ll let the paint and clear coat cure overnight and assess it tomorrow.

My last task of the evening was to install K1000-6 platenuts onto the left wing light bracket.  I also constructed a couple of ground wires (one per side) with FastOn ring terminals and installed one of them between the bracket and the inboard platenut.

And here we have the light installed into the bracket.

Tomorrow I’ll repeat the primer/paint/clear coat and bracket configuration on the right wing leading edge light.

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