Jur's RV7 Aircraft Factory
3497 hours and counting

Some time ago, I had to send back my Experimental AeroLEDs AeroSun VX landing lights because some of the mounting legs on the housing broke off.
These legs are very, very vulnerable and simply cannot handle much stress.

At first, I thought I had received a defective product, perhaps with a problem in the housing. AeroLEDs sent me a new set, and I reinstalled them.

Yes, I did follow the installation manual closely. And no, there was no excessive force applied to the screws.
The second time, I was even more careful. I reinforced the drilled holes with fiberglass and redrilled them to make absolutely sure there would be no stress whatsoever on the mounting legs.

The mounting ears contain a small brass nut encapsulated in a thin plastic leg. A screw with a spring goes from the outside into the brass nut. The idea is that you can adjust the tension on the screw, allowing you to tilt the landing light up or down.

The theory is very nice, but in practice it simply doesn't work. The material used for these legs is just too weak to hold up.

Only one month after installation, one of the legs broke off again — simply because I gently moved the wingtip to another location. And after a couple of months, none of the legs were free of cracks.

If these things break so easily while the aircraft is sitting on the ground, you can imagine what is going to happen with all the vibration they are subjected to in the air.

So I decided to give up on the mounting legs and the adjustability altogether. I am now using epoxy/flox to permanently fix the landing lights in place.

It's a real shame that I have had to do this with a product that costs US$997!

I can only say that I am seriously disappointed. I would never buy these again.

I am pleased with AeroLEDs' other products, but in my opinion, this mounting system is simply not fit for purpose and should be redesigned before these lights are sold to other builders.
In my personall opinion, they should just remove this product from their product catalog.

Enough of the wining, I blocked the Aeroleds VX experimental landing light in place with some wood sticks and duct tape.

I do hope I got the angle right, because there is no way to adjust them again once the epoxy has cured.

 Scuffed the housing and surrounding epoxy and made sure that the line of the landing light is parallel to the edge of the landing light tip.
Put a wood stick covered in packing tape with wax on it between the cooling fins and the edge to ensure the epoxy would not spread around the cooling fins.

 Mixed up a big batch of west system epoxy with cotton flox and glued the light in place.

It looks awfull but won't move anywhere anymore. I could easily remove the wood sticks once the epoxy got to about half way curing.

 The next day I did the same thing on the other wingtip landing light and sanded away the excess epoxy. It looks good from the outside.

The painting journey has really started ! Today we moved the wing to the paint shop booth. Brent painted it in the base color white and then it dried for overnight. The next day, we did the second wing. Both wings are now in white, ready for lettering and taping off for the wingtip red and grey accents.

We placed the wing, well protected, on a trailer. Blankets underneath and foam pads in front and the back. Straps help hold everything in place without being to tensed. Just making sure it won't move during the 20 minutes drive.

I have to admit, driving with these wings in the trailer and thinking about all worst case scenario's and what might happen if another car bumps into the trailer made me very nervous.
Fortunatly, we made it both ways without any incidents and below you can see an image of the wing in the wingstand in the professional paint booth.

One day later I walked in and got smashed away by the look of it. This is very motivating. The day after we did the other wing and the ailerons and flaps.

The Bill Lane Plenum is finally finished... I took some images for fellow builders who need to form the mental pictures. I received some pictures from Bill himself which helped me picture the process so I hope this contributes to other people who also are looking for images of Bill's plenum. I described the process in earlier articles. Just search for Bill Lane or Plenum in the search and you"ll find them easily.
The plenum can be purchased at James Aircraft at https://www.jamesaircraft.com/ and I can warmly recommend it to everyone installing the James cowling. It allows you to use the standard Vans baffle kit and sits a lot higher above the cylinders than the version 1 James plenum does.

I decided to paint the finish color in the same color as my Superior Engine block. It came out really nice and the black rock covers stand out really well.

The fit is nice and tight, small remaining gaps will be filled with RTV on final installation.

 Passenger side top, #1 cylinder

Nice fit at the top on the baffle sides

A shot of the right side customised front baffle and anti rotation angle.

Similar shot on the left side.

It took me months to build this and get it finalised but I'm absolutly thrilled with the result !

I might still put some black paint in the air inlets for a nicer view from the front. That's on the to do list for final tweaking.

A big day again in my project. Nothing substantially done but I have hung the propellor on the engine prop hub for the first time.
I kind of wanted an idea how everything would fit together and what is delivered by Catto with the propellor, spinner and saber extention.

I have a 4 inch Saber extention, spool type. This is required for the Sam James cowling installation.
It took a couple of tries to find the way to do this but it's pretty self explanatory once you understand things. The spinner is predrilled and cut and the holes in the spinner plate are also made with nutplates installed. This makes it pretty simple.

Short bolts hang the spool to the prop hub behind the starter flywheel. You bolt these in in a star pattern. I am just doing this temporarily so there is no torqueing involved yet. This will come of a zillion of times. The long bolts holding the propellor and everything forward of the spool extentions are very long. The threads also extend quite far through the extension. This is probably for having enough space if an additional weight plate has to be added up front.

Here is a view with the prop bolted on. This is pretty damned cool seeing this a first time.

Front picture.