Since I couldn’t work on the false spars yet, I decided to go ahead and finish a few outstanding tasks on the right wing and then start looking at the wiring harnesses. I began by drilling the final fabric rivet hole in the center aileron/flap hanger. The manual tells you to use a 12” bit from below which works okay but I didn’t like the results I achieved on the left wing with that method. Instead, Craig let me borrow a threaded collet for a #30 bit that fits in the angle drill. That, combined with the offset head and a normal jobber length #30 bit let me drill the hole straight on and with a really nice result. With that done, I also attached the new pitot bracket CubCrafters sent me to the left wing. This bracket was bent much better and it went on nicely. I don’t see any torque values specified for the screws that were used anywhere so I just snugged them but I’m waiting to apply the final torque seal until I verify that.
With those steps out of the way, I started working on landing light wiring harnesses. Specifically, I’m making harnesses out of 2 conductor, shielded, 18ga wire to replace the 20ga harnesses that came with the kit. This will allow me to use more powerful landing lights in the future if I want to with a very minimal weight penalty. Specifically, I’m looking at 95W AeroLED Landing Lights. I talked to someone from AeroLEDs on the phone and this is the wire gauge they recommended. They also recommended 20ga wire for their wingtip nav/strobe/position lights so I’ll make replacement harnesses for those too in case I want to swap them out in the future.
I stripped the end of the 18ga wire for the landing lights and put a solder sleeve in place to provide a ground for the cable shield; however, my heat gun appeared to not get hot enough to melt the solder. I’m going to order a more powerful heat gun and try again but I have a few extra solder sleeves and extra wire so a couple test ends isn’t bad. That was it for the night though since I need a new tool.