Wingtip Landing Lights

I decided to get started on the wingtip landing lights tonight.  I’m using the Van’s landing light kit which provides two 75W halogen bulbs in each wingtip (one each for taxi and landing).  I may upgrade the landing lights to HID or LED lights if these don’t provide enough light and I do enough night flying to matter, but I don’t see any reason to do that before I’m flying.

First up is to trim extra material from the rear part of the bulb holders.  Here you can see the extra material sticking out from around the front part of the bulb holders.

After trimming and running these over the scotchbrite wheel, these are nice and flush.

Next up is to fabricate a dozen tapered spacers from some tube stock.  These have a 70º slope to them to allow the bulb attach screws to sit flush against the spacer even though the wingtip surface that these screws go through is swept back 20º.  This will all become clear when I start attaching the lights to the wingtips.