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.
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.
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!
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".
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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
Next I cut out the indicated area from the supplied template, and then taped and clecoed it to the wing as indicated.
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…
Satisfied with the location I marked the location of the cutout.
The cutoff tool works pretty good… wear a mask though… lots of aluminum
dust floating around… yuck! And be careful, lack of attention to your
'blind-spots' could very easily make for a bad day. Thankfully, no
problems here. I used the cutoff tool to make the straight cuts along
the 4 flat sides.
To finish off the corners, I utilized a small cutoff wheel on the
dremel. This allowed me to get much closed to the line in the corners.
To get the opening out to the line I used this cutter bit in the
dremel. This thing works pretty good and shaves away material fairly
easily. It leaves a pretty ragged edge, but the openings are pretty
much to their final size now.
Then, to finish the landing light openings off, it was some old
fashioned elbow grease with various files, followed by numerous passes
with the small scotch-brite wheel in the drill, and then finished off
with a quick pass with a maroon scotch-brite pad. I'm actually quite
happy with the way these turned out!
Next up is to fit the lens retaining brackets. 2 pieces form an upper
bracket, and 2 form a lower bracket. The top pieces in this picture
have rivet holes in the upper extreme corners that get countersunk…
very, very thin material to be countersinking, but the rivets that get
installed in these holes are merely used as guides for keeping the
lense in place. There's no real load put on them since the lense will
simply just slide in place between them. So anyway, I deburred these
pieces, marked them all, and then countersunk the holes.
Since the thicker piece will fit flush against the inside of the skin,
it needs to be countersunk to accept the skin dimples we'll be putting
in later.
The last thing to do for the upper retaining brackets is to put a
slight bend in the larger piece. This opens up the 'slot' allowing the
lense to be inserted a bit easier. I clamped it to the end of the
table, and gently hammered a slight bend.
Ok, back to the lower bracket… the two pieces were clecoed together so
the screw holes could be drilled to their final size, and also so the
nutplate holes on the thicker piece could be match-drilled to the
thinner piece. After that, the holes were countersunk because this
side will sit flush against the inside of the skin. After then
finally, the screw holes were countersunk to accomodate the dimples in
the skin.
Instead
of mounting the template to a piece of cardboard I decided to cut out
the lightening hole, and also the area marked for the pressed
stiffener. This gave me plenty of reference for accurately
locating the template on the rib. Once in place, I used a sharpie
through the two screw holes to mark their location.
Instead of marking all four ribs I marked one of the left
ones, and one of the right ones. I then drilled the screw holes,
and then the nutplate rivets holes using the normal clecoe and nutplate
procedure. Once all holes were drilled (undersize) in these two
ribs, I clamped them to their partnering ribs and final drilled the
holes to their final size through two ribs at once. Probably not
needed, but it ensures that both sets of holes for the same mounting
plate are identically positioned.
After the holes were deburred, I dimpled the nutplate attachment holes. The screw holes don't get dimpled this time.
One
of the neighbors came by (one of the regulars :-) along with his 2-yr
old daughter. While we were talking shop the curious little
toddler took an interest in finger painting while the white paint was
still wet. This area is behind where the landing lights will be
so no harm, no foul. Angela & I think its kinda cute so we'll
leave it for a good chuckle or two in the future.
Here's Sylvester checking out the newly applied paint job. She's not impressed!
Here are the other components of the landing light mounts.
And since the can of paint was running out I sprayed just the front portion of the wing ribs.
Once the paint had dried I decided to bust out the ole rivet
squeezer and attach the nutplates for attaching the landing light
mounting plates to the wing ribs.
After that, I attached the nutplates for the bulbs and ballasts to the mounting plates.
And then the last thing I did was assemble the mounting plates by riveting the two pieces together with their angles.
I
used the band saw with a fine toothed metal cutting blade to cut the
plexiglass lenses… works very well! Anyway, after cutting
the lense width, a line is marked about 0.7" above the line for the
upper edge of the skin cutout. This is close to the right
dimension, but intentionally long in order to sand it to a perfect fit.
Once
the upper portion is cut back to the line, the upper bracket is used to
mark the width of the upper portion of the lense. (I'm glad I
haven't riveted these in the skin yet!) The lense will slide
between the two rivets so the upper corners of the lense need to be
trimmed to fit.
I
clecoed the bracket back inside the skin and then slid the lense into
place for a trial fit. As mentioned before, the upper portion of
the lense is a little long, as evidenced by the fact the upper mark for
the cutout is slightly below the edge of the cutout. This is a
simple trial and error process... remove, sand, reinstall, and repeat
if necessary.
Once the upper edge of the lense is taken care of the focus
changes to the lower edge. The lense is reinstalled, again making
sure its seated properly, and using a pen through the 3 screw holes in
the skin, the holes are marked on the tape.
The 3 holes in the lower bracket are then positioned over the
marked holes, and a line for the lower edge of the lense is marked.
Being conservative, I cut a little long (I can always sand a
little more, but I can't put any back!). It took a couple of
attempts, but it finally fit pretty good. Here's the lense with
the bracket screwed into place… I should probably remove that
tape huh ;-)
There… that's one, now on to the other! Once
they were both done I set the lenses aside. When they're finally
installed they'll be sealed with a small piece of weather stripping to
keep the elements out.
First
thing I did was plug the wire connectors into the ballast, and then
attached it to the brackets. After that the light was dropped
into the hole and it's retainer bracket screwed in place. Then
the power supply wire from the ballast was connected to the
light. I won't worry about stowing the the wires right now.
I'll do all that later when I finally wire these things up in the
wings. For now, the wires will just get bundled together so they
don't flop around.
Next
I positioned the assemblies in the leading edges and installed the 4
mounting screws. This has to be done by sticking a screwdriver
through the cutout in the leading edge. Here's a shot from the
rear after its installed.
And here's a shot of the business end. Lines up fairly nicely!
