Brief Description: Discovered/recovered from big screw-up.
Continued working on landing light mounting. Near beginning of session discovered a major screw up I made a few days ago when I cut the openings in the wing. Turns out I had lined up the template on the wrong rivets on the bottom side of the wing. See photo. This resulted in cutting a hole that is one inch too large on the bottom. As I was lamenting the necessity to order a new wing skin and drill out hundreds of rivets to replace it I got a better idea.
I had already cut and fitted the plexiglass lens to the hole, so why not just leave it that way? The only hitch in that plan was that the brackets, installed in the correct location, would now interfere with mounting the lens. Solved that by modifying the brackets to remove the interfering portion and splice on a short extension to reach back to the mounting holes. That way I could use the original holes that I had drilled (incorrectly) in the wing skin. The only lasting effect of this will be that my landing light opening will be slightly bigger than specified. Of course before proceeding with this plan I called Van's and got their approval.
The other day I used some hardware store primer on the light kit parts, instead of the NAPA 7220. Glad I only did a few parts, as this turns out to be a terrible product that did not stick well at all. Kept coming off as I handled the parts. So - I removed it all with Acetone and reprimed. So much for taking shortcuts.
All in all a day in "recovery" mode. Two steps forward, one step back.
