Many thanks to all who have responded to my request for ideas on routing the
navlight/strobe wires. Since I was laying up the leading edge D-section, I
had to come up with something quickly, and fortunately, what I came up with
seems to be the consensus solution. I found some very lightweight poly
tubing called "header pipe" , brand name "Polytube Gardena" in the garden
section of our local hardware. Total weight for both wings is about 1 lb.
I routed it through the 2nd lightening hole from the spar for reasons I
will discuss in a moment. This means that I had to bore a hole through the
#3 solid core. For this I filed teeth on the end of a 5/8" .035 wall piece
of Alum. tubing, and turned it by hand using a 5/8 hole through the #2 core
rib as a guide. I had to withdraw it after boring about each 2 inches to
knock out the foam core remnants from inside the tube. But, it's only a 10
or 15 minute job in total. To feed the tube through the core hole, I used a
1/2" dowel about 1 m long with a bullet nose on the front end and the back
end forced into the tube, which made the job of feeding this flexible curved
tube into a long rough hole somewhat manageable.
I chose the 2nd lightening hole for the wires because I plan to mount the
nav/strobe lights slightly forward of the spar area of the tip. I have
reserved the wingtip immediately outboard of the spar for my singlehanded
rigging/derigging jig. I plan on glassing in an alum. tube socket through
the small foam block and into the end of the spar, about 8 in. This will
enable me to plug in a welded tubing lightweight 2-wheel cart at the wingtip
which I hope will make singlehanded rigging possible, and maybe even easy.
An additional benefit of the wingtip socket will become evident at
finishing/painting time, as mounting the wing on a rotissary becomes dead
simple. My last project was an Avid Flyer, and I built rotissaries for both
the fuselage and wings, and believe me, they were well worth the effort.
After rigging the Europa, I will poke in a couple of white plastic hole
plugs to fair the sockets and keep them from whistling. (We must keep it
"whisper quiet", you know!)
I have drawings of my planned singlehanded cart, which works well on paper!
I would be interested in hearing of other builder's ideas or experience in
singlehanded rigging.
Chuck Popenoe
A36
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