(Duckworks HID Landing Lights): Ok,
our landing lights arrived. We're installing what seems to be the
RV standard landing light, the Duckworks kit. Van's provides a
landing light option for most, if not all, of their kits, but the
lights are small 75watt bulbs, and I've never heard any RV owner say
they're "great", or even just "good". Almost all seem to say
they're lacking... I guess that's why the Duckworks kits are so
popular! Duckworks come in 3 flavors: 55watt rectangular
automotive type (very cheap and effective), 100watt round aviation type
(more light), and the 35watt round HID "xenon" types. We're going
with the HIDs... they're less taxing on the electrical system,
operate at cooler temps, have no filament to burn out, and put out a
ton of light compared to the others. We're installing one in each
wing, and we're also integrating the installation with the assembly of
the Leading Edge assembly. The Duckworks kits were originally
designed as a retrofit on existing wings, so thats how the instructions
are written. We're just taking advantage of much easier access to
the wing internals by installing now, plus we won't have to deal with
touching up any primer or that sort of thing.
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Here
are the contents of the kit: Mounting plate, aluminum angle,
retainer bracket, HID light & ballast, cables to conect the two,
and a bag of too much stuff to mention! There's also a lens that
I forgot to get in this pic.
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The
first step in the Duckworks instructions are to make the cutouts in the
leading edge skins. We're going to take care of the mounting
plates first... no reason I guess other than not wanting to cut into my
wing skin just yet (scary!) Anyway, we do want to get the plates
taken care of before we disassemble the leading edges so we can trial
fit them, so we need to do them sooner rather than later. So,
here we go... The mounting plates are carry-overs from the kits for the
smaller RVs. The RV-10 is the largest of the RVs so the mounting
plates need to be 'extended'. So, they're marked for
cutting. We'll be inserting angles in the gap to extend this
piece. The hashed areas will be removed and the resulting 'tab'
between them will be bent up to form a flange for stiffness.
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…
and here I'm cutting… (Angela wanted me to put this pic of me in
my goofy hat… hey, it was in the mid 20's outside, and our
little heater was doing all it could!)
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Here you can see how the tab is bent up to form a
flange. The instructions say to bend it down, but then mention if
you plan to attach the HID ballast to the back of the plate to bend it
up… you have to read ahead to catch that!
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Next up is to cut the supplied angles to length.
There's no exact science to it, just something around 7-8". We
did ours 7".
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(17-3 step 8): Angela
wanted something to do so she began the teardown and debur
process. Since I was still working on the outboard sections of
the wings she basically began by pulling off inboard ribs and
deburring. Here she's showing us her freshly deburred splice
strip!
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(17-3 step 9): And here, she's showing us how she man-handles the DRDT-2 while dimpling rib flanges… take that!
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(Duckworks HID Landing Lights):
Now its time to 'stretch' the mounting plate. The two
mounting flanges on either side of the plate will be mounted to ribs in
the wing. The approximate distance between the ribs is
15.5". I tried temporarily installing the assembly (the mounting
plate now in 2 pieces, and the two angles) and clamping it all
together, but this proved to be a real pain! Then I just decided
to measure between the two ribs and just do it that way. The
mounting flanges are fairly long and can be pulled outwards (to a small
degree) when screwed to the ribs, so the plate can afford to be
slighlty short. Based on my measurement between the ribs it
seemed like their 15.5" was right on. So that's what I shot
for. Once I got the pieces lined up, I clamped the angles to the
plate and drilled some 1/8" holes, clecoing as I went. Once the
plates were all clecoed together, I installed them in the wings to see
how they fit... one was slightly tight, but I think it'll be fine.
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Here you can see why the tab needed to be bent 'up'…
this is the ballast. It can be installed pretty much anywhere the
cables will reach but this is the most common and seems to make
sense. It's straddled across the opening in the mounting
plate. Notice the plate has been turned over... forward is facing
down, and aft is facing up. Once I was satisfied with the
location of the ballast I marked the location for its mounting holes.
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You can see the 3 mounting holes for the ballast (two on the
right, one on the left). Now I need to drill the holes for the #8
nutplates… this is the first time I used our black clecoes!
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Once all the nutplate holes were drilled I dimpled
them. The ballast mounts from the back side, the lamp itself
mounts from the frontside, so you have to be careful and dimple on the
correct side for each!
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Now that the plates are pretty much squared away, I began the
process of cutting the holes in the leading edge skins. First
step, I removed the blue vinyl from the area.
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Next I cut out the indicated area from the supplied template, and then taped and clecoed it to the wing as indicated.
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Then, just to make darn sure I'm doing this right, I held the
mounting bracket in its approximate location to make sure the location
of the light jived with the hole I was getting ready to cut out for it
to shine through. So far, so good…
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Satisfied with the location I marked the location of the
cutout. Its kinda late, so I'll save the fun stuff til
tomorrow…
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