Tag Archives: Panel

Finishing the Rudder skin & mounting the light

Hours: 4.5

I spent some time over the past week figuring out Electrical wiring and Antennas, talking with Adam from Midwest Panel Builders who I am working with for my panel and wiring.

Aside from that I was working on finishing the Rudder and preparing for the next parts. Jean is sending me replacements for the dented ribs of the Vertical Stabilizer, so I can put that together next and the Navigation Antenna will arrive this week as well to get that going. I will be using the Rami AV-525 VOR/LOC/GS Antenna.

Riveting the skin went all pretty smoothly. I had to take off the front top skin one last time as I had a bit of overspray on the outside from priming. A little bit of scrubbing using MEK and it was all clean.

Mounting the light to the fiberglass tip

After I finished the skin, I worked on mounting the support plate I made earlier for the anti collision light on top of the fiberglass tip.
To pull the rivnuts I’m using the Astro Pneumatic ADN14 tool and Loctite 277 Threadlocker. It just mounts to the front of my drill and then you just need to hold the shell and the drill pulls in the rivnut.

After all that was done, I temporarily mounted the light onto the Rudder and ran the wire through the structure. Then I brought over my DC Power Supply unit and made it shine brightly.

Testing the light in place using my bench power supply