Finishing wing lights and lens

January 12th, 9h

We finished installing the lights into the wing tips. We had to make some small adjustment to the wing tips for a smooth insertion of the lights. Then we riveted the plate nuts, and attached the lights.

Afterwards, we moved to the lens. We did a rough cut of the lens, then we set each half on top of its wing tip, and traced a contour to follow. Based on the contour, we cut he lens using snips, then we sanded it to get a nice finish.

Afterward, to attach the lens to the wing tip, we decided to go with 2 plate nuts per lens. we match drilled the lens to the wing tip, then we drilled the rest of the holes for the plate nuts and riveted it. Finally we attached the lens to the wing tip. The result looks great.

Wing Lights Mounting

August 4th & 9th, 15h

Next in the wing light topic is the landing light installation. The landing lights get installed in the landing light board using screws and springs, so that we can easily adjust orientation as desired.

Next was cutting the wing tips to install the lights. We did a series of small cuts using a Dremel, to ensure that we only remove the minimum while having ease of installation of the light boards. We did all the composite work of all the 4 wing tips in the same time. We also did some small adjustments to the boards, sanding some some sections of the edges, to allow for ease of installation.

Wing Lights Soldering

June 14th 3h

The next part to solder together was the control board. The soldering went on pretty smoothly.

June 30th 5h

I decided to go wit the flyLED wing tip lights. These light include all of the navigation, landing and taxi light in the wing tip. So, no need to cut the leading edges to install landing and taxi lights. I do have a little bit of concern about the lighting of the center of the runway, but I read that the lights are plenty. If not, an option is to add and extra light under the prop to light the center of the runway.

So, we got started today in the lights, by soldering all the part together and testing. All the LEDs work and the lights are very bright, even when using just 9V, instead of the 12V that will be used in the plane.