cool... so i got bethany out in the garage to help me buck the final rivets around the nose of the leading edges, easy as pie. she's a good bucker...

While we've got the leading edges off, i figured we should at least do some of the Headlight install. You can do it after you've riveted the leading edges onto the wings, but as Ron Burgundy would say, "When in Rome...". i dunno. My real reason for doing it now is that i'm really freaked out to cut holes in the wings, so at least if i screw it up now, i don't have to remove the leading edges from the main spar to replace them. it's a dark thought, i know... But one must be practical. Here's the template...

Here I've sort of laid out the lines with blue tape. The corners have a nice radius drawn which you can't really see in the picture. i'll follow that to make the smooth corners.Here's my initial cut out. not too bad. Just go VERRRRRRYYY slowly. i was petrified for the entire time i was cutting.

In the kit they give you blind rivets to attach the nutplates onto the ribs, but i went the extra mile and used solid rivets. I used 426s (countersunk) so i had to dimple the holes in the ribs, dimple the nutplate attach holes, etc. a ton of extra work, but it looks nice. Ridiculous to say that the inside of the wing looks nice i know, but if i was a normal guy, i wouldn't be building an airplane. Then you make the bracket that holds the actual light bulb, and i'm also mounting the ballast here on the back. No brain surgery here, just measure, cleco, drill, deburr, etc.

Then you make the line for the upper lens holder, drill and dimple...

The bracket is all made up, so i alodined it and riveted it together.

ok, so i thought waaaay too much about this stuff, and decided that i didn't want to see primer through the headlight hole, so i went to my friendly neighborhood auto paint store and picked up this metallic silver to spray the brackets, and also the inside of the leading edge skin around the headlight hole. In the instructions for the landing lights, they say that if you leave the area just in front of the light reflective aluminum, it shines more light on the ground in front of the plane for taxiing. Rather than leave something unprimed, i just shot the metallic silver over everything. it looks nice, and will be plenty reflective. it was also a good excuse to get a HVLP spray gun, which i really liked using.

Then I went on to fitting the lenses, and so far i'm 0 for 1. After finishing the fit for the first lens, i'm not happy with the results, so i'll be ordering another and giving it another go. whatever. I went through 5 trim tabs to get 2 good ones. sometimes i suck at airplaning.