Chapter 22 – Laser altimeter… etc

Today I got a nice little surprise in the mail.  I opened up the box to find a very nicely packaged couple of items . . . hmmm?

The plastic bag seemed to contain something akin to “aluminum knuckles” while the box had something wrapped in bubble wrap . . .  what could it be?

Ahhh, it’s the Laserware SF11/C Laser Altimeter & bracket that I ordered as the final crowning piece to implement Marc Zeitlin’s new nose gear wiring circuit!  As with many actual Long-EZ parts I’ve received over the years, it’s much smaller & lighter than I expected, almost toy like (which of course it most certainly ain’t!).  But then again, it does typically get mounted on a drone.

I did a quick test fit of the laser altimeter inside the unique bracket that is sold by Acroname, the place I purchased the laser altimeter.

Here’s a shot to help show the laser altimeter’s quite diminutive size.

I then proceeded to thread Clickbonds into the mounting holes on the AEM box and I took it down to the shop to test fit it.  I’ve been thinking about a potential mounting issue in that by virtue of being mounted with Clickbonds to the face of F22, it will be difficult to get the box in & out and off those Clickbonds with the way it’s configured sitting down in that NG30 cover notch.  You see, the original AEX box didn’t have mounting tabs so I actually glassed in a couple of hard points into the top face of the NG30 cover notch to mount the AEX box to the NG30 cover, vs. the F22 bulkhead.

My thinking is that I’ll elongate the bottom holes to allow for a front to aft twisting action as the box gets installed (technically not supposed to cut into 3D printed constructed stuff as I’ve learned since it’s not solid plastic, but rather matrixed plastic . . . but this was an oversight on my part in designing the box, although I did push both mounting holes up on the tabs significantly to allow for easier mounting in the NG30 cover notch… just didn’t do enough of what I had intended for getting this thing mounted).  In addition, I’ll shorten the threaded Clickbond studs to the shortest they can possibly be while still gripping a mounting nut.

The last item to show today is the lathed knurled insert with flox grooves that I designed as a nose sidewall mounting hardpoint for the pitch trim actuator.  Of course –as fantastic as this looks– I obviously did NOT make it using my primitive neanderthal methods.  Marco graciously knocked this out on his lathe in no time flat and threw it in with the AEM box that he shipped to me literally right after machining this piece.

Here’s another shot of the Marco-machined flox-ready nose sidewall mounting hardpoint for the pitch trim actuator.

That’s pretty much it for today, making today a light build day since I’m off to see a car show with friends.

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