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Adding Landing Light Lens


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A man much smarter than I shared this with me. " A plane is like boat with barnacles on the bottom.  If you remove one barnacle, you don't notice the increase in speed.  You remove a lot of barnacles, then suddenly you can get on plane and go faster.  Every little thing on our airplanes is like a barnacle.  You streamline one thing, you don't notice.

You streamline 50 things, then all of those minute increases in speed add up to something. " Art Mattson

Unfortunately to remove enough barnacles on a vintage Mooney, you would spend enough to buy a new cabin cruiser size boat without any barnacles!

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5 hours ago, pstone said:

A man much smarter than I shared this with me. " A plane is like boat with barnacles on the bottom.  If you remove one barnacle, you don't notice the increase in speed.  You remove a lot of barnacles, then suddenly you can get on plane and go faster.  Every little thing on our airplanes is like a barnacle.  You streamline one thing, you don't notice.

You streamline 50 things, then all of those minute increases in speed add up to something. " Art Mattson

I took my 50 year old E up for an hour today. Leveled out at 7500 before doing a hold and a GPS approach. 157 KTAS was as much as I could milk out of her on an 85 deg day.

IMG_20160425_114528488[1].jpg

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12 hours ago, Yetti said:

Not that much of a bend.  Could probably clamp the top edge, heat it up and let it droop a bit.  Hold it till it resets

It is not hard to make a mold to put a convex dip in Plexiglas. Rigging a router to smooth the edges on a piece that small is a different story.

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24 minutes ago, DonMuncy said:

It is not hard to make a mold to put a convex dip in Plexiglas. Rigging a router to smooth the edges on a piece that small is a different story.

Or you can spend 59 dollars get the complete ready to install kit. What's your time worth

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22 minutes ago, DonMuncy said:

It is not hard to make a mold to put a convex dip in Plexiglas. Rigging a router to smooth the edges on a piece that small is a different story.

Sand paper,  Sand paper attached to a Sanding station, Works on glass edges also.  you can cut yourself badly and things can melt and splinter.   A shaper table would work also.  You can cut yourself doing anything I suggest.

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3 minutes ago, bonal said:

Or you can spend 59 dollars get the complete ready to install kit. What's your time worth

Probably about 15 minutes and I would make two, since I put a split in the last one by getting a little too tight on the screws.  And the knowledge that I fabricated something myself... Priceless.  Plus I would put it down on my hours to get an Airframe Certificate...

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Back in the early 90's I made my own lens cover. Piece of cake. couple of small pieces of angle aluminum screwed to the inside edge, cut a piece of lexan on the bandsaw and heated with a torch to get the bow just right ( several practice tries on scrape).  Maybe five dollars worth of material.  Back then I was young and cheap and hungry for speed.

Pritch

 

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35 minutes ago, bonal said:

Or you can spend 59 dollars get the complete ready to install kit. What's your time worth

About 10 cents an hour. :)   But I sure would not fault anyone for buying the kit. It is priced right.

I get a lot of satisfaction making things for myself and friends.

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  • 2 weeks later...

My LASAR kit finally came in. It was $85 after shipping. I'll have to drill into my landing light retainer x3 to mount the three screws to hold the bracket, and I have to get a plastic drill bit to drill the lens (kinda hoping it would come pre-drilled). I'll start on this as soon as she's back in my hangar (LASAR advises no STC and W&B change is necessary, so its able to be installed by the owner).

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I wonder if I should do anything to that piece of aluminum? It goes around the top half, so if I leave it bare metal, it should theoretically, reflect more light downward, but then again, if I paint it to match, it will look neater on the ground.

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On May 6, 2016 at 10:13 PM, Raptor05121 said:

 (LASAR advises no STC and W&B change is necessary, so its able to be installed by the owner).

If you are drilling holes and mounting this on your aircraft I believe the FAA would call that a minor modification which would require an A&P sign off. 

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7 hours ago, daver328 said:

Yeah, that's what I said. But no one listens to me either. If it is not an STC, then it is an "owner produced part." Requires a logbook entry. Very least. STC requires 337. Did I say no one listens to me?

I thought that reading and comprehension were the weak points.

Clarence

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  • 3 years later...

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