Today was supposed to be final hinge riveting day—didn’t happen. I began fitting the Archer NAV antenna and reading the mounting instructions which call for drilling 3 mounting holes thru the fiberglass tip to secure the antenna—presumable to make the antenna removable in the future. Hmm, if it is already riveted to the hinge area with 6 or 8 rivets and secured with some glass strips is several areas it won’t be exactly removable-at least not in one piece. The mounting holes also have some guides for routing wires to the NAV/strobe lights. I didn’t feel comfortable with screws that I could not access in case one of the nuts came loose, so I made some mounting brackets which I pop riveted to the antenna. These brackets will allow mounting of the wire clips etc. It seemed like a quick little project, but took long enough that I didn’t have time to rivet the hinge in place. The end of 2015 was my target date to be done with the tips—well, looks like I need to move that into early 2016.
