Wings

Burned some midnight oil tonight. Instead of doing any more wing top skin work, I continued with the prep-work for the landing lights and stall warning system in the L leading edge. First thing was to cut out the hole for the light. Before receiving the kit, I had searched online for the exact dimensions of the cutout and couldn't find anything, so I snapped a photo of this:

The Duckworks RV-10 template laid over the L leading edge, outboard bay. The light can be installed in any bay, but most people opt for the outboard-most bay for a number of reasons, so I'll follow along.

The hole is 5" wide, 2-1/2" in from the rivet line. It begins about 19-1/8" from the aft edge on top, and 15-7/8" from the aft edge on the bottom. Corners are radiused approximately 1-1/4".

Here's my take on cutting out the hole: I've read a number of build blogs that talked about how scared they were to cut the hole, and then it turned out to be pretty easy. So I guess I went into this thinking no big deal, it will be really easy and take 2 seconds. Well, I guess I struggled with it more than I was thinking I would, because I ended up using a ton of different tools to get it cut out. I used a body saw, an air nibbler, a cut-off wheel, a dremel, a drill-powered sanding drum, and a hand file. No single tool was fit for the entire job, but the combination of them all seemed to do the trick. Finally though, I prevailed, without any dreaded slips or ugly nicks:

The L wing cutout for the landing light

Since I had all the cutting tools out, why not do the stall warning system too? Skipped ahead to Section 20 and began prep work for that.

Access hatch cut into L leading edge skin, inboard-most bay

Stall warning flapper cutout. This works similar to many production aircraft, with a metal tab that sticks out of the leading edge and actuates a micro switch to sound the stall alarm.

Funny sidenote about the stall flapper cutout in the leading edge: RTFI (read the instructions)! The skins come pre-punched with two very small (~3/32") holes to mark where this cutout needs to go. Step 19-2.15 says to file out the area between these holes to make the cutout. However, I missed reading the previous step 19-2.14 where it says to enlarge the holes to #10 first! So, I spent like 30 minutes with the world's smallest file, making a perfect 3/32" slit in the leading edge, thinking "man, this thing is TINY." Had to laugh at myself once it was done and how long I spent making a slit that would have to be enlarged later. Oh well.

The micro switch and components provided in the kit for the stall warning system