Service Bulletin No. 70

When I first bought N9GZ from the John Mark Stroud back in '09, I noticed some small cracking at the base of the vertical fin. These cracks seemed to be a paint issue but I followed up with John and he provided some email correspondence from the factory on their take on the issue. Their view was quote "Nothing I see gives me a concern for structural integrity since the vertical fin structure relies primarily on the vertical fin spar and secure attachment to the fin trailing edges and bulkhead C. The cracks are surface in nature, stemming from flexing or expansion of the adhesive joint on the right half of the vertical fin."

So I kind of forgot about it since there wasn't any structural problems with the plane. Over the next two years or so, the crack grew slightly and if anything,  I was starting to let this small blemish on an otherwise nice paint job start to bother me. I knew that I had to get this fixed one day but I kept putting it off. I was worried about matching the color and wondering who could I trust with painting the plane. Then I started reading of some other owners who had similar cracks and thought maybe there's something more going on here. It wasn't long before Glasair released Service Bulletin No. 70.

The you read through the bulletin, you'll see what amounts to the issues and the fix. It involves sanding down the area and also installing a reinforcement piece to the vertical spar at bulkhead C. I ordered the part for the spar and had Joe at A&P do the install. Thankfully there were no deep cracks and everything pointed to just some cosmetic cracking. However, now I had to see who could paint the plane to match the original color. Well, the closest guy also happens to be the best around, Ed's Aircraft Refinishing over at Brookhaven airport. The problem was getting an appointment.

Eventually, Ed found time for me and did a great job adding the additional composite to the area and matching the paint.

So for now, all good.

Landing Lights revisited... LED

As you may have seen in my earlier post I changed out the standard halogen MR16 landing lights for HID lights a few years ago and really liked the improvement in brightness and range of the high intensity lights.  Because of their size, there weren't too many options available and I wanted the brightest I could find. I decided on a pair from Rigid Industries and Joe at A&P did a great good installing them. However, they were not without their problems. The main issue was that I rarely could get both of my lights to come on at the same time. Sometimes, if I cycled the switch it would work but it was hit or miss. After hours of tinkering with it for months, switching parts and calling the manufacture, I just gave up and started to look for a replacement. (I see Rigid doesn't even sell them anymore..) Now there are others out there but I was starting to see if I could find an LED MR16 replacement. Well, so began my long road to make something work.

Now there are a number of MR16 LED's for home use, but there are two issues; brightness and noise. I ordered a number of sample units to see if they would work and quickly found out that anything less than 1000 lumens was not going to work for a landing light. Plus the cheap home improvement store ones would completely interfere with my radios. I wanted as bight of a LED as I could get so I was sure someone out there had done something for the experimental market. Well, none of the Glastar Sporteman owners had a solution but a guy with a Van's RV had. He did a lot of work trying different lights and ended up with a LED CREE flashlight unit that would fit the MR16 mount in the wingtip of his plane! There had to be a few modifications but it would fit in the MR16 housing. The unit was rated for 9-12v and 2000 lumens and sold for about $30! This was great!

So I ordered a few from China and waited 4 weeks for them to come in. (ugh..) I also decided to do something else I couldn't do with the HID's; have the lights pulse or wig-wag for added safety. I looked around for a number of options and decided on a simple solid state unit from this guy. The unit is small and the wiring is easy.

 Mounting the lights and wiring them up was not that big of a deal. I originally wanted to have a three way rocker installed to replace my original light switch but that proved undoable, so I decided to add an additional switch for the wig-wag function. I was amazed how bright they were.

Seems like I'm all set right? Nothing is that easy. With everything installed I went out for my first flight and returned only to find the lights had failed! What had happened? Now these lights will get hot and anyone who owns one the these flashlights know that they can't stay on continuously at high output for very long. They do have a safety feature that will shut down the light to cool off and will cycle back on, but I was certain that with the lights located in the cowl and continuous airflow from the prop there would not be any heat issue. The only other reason I could think of was vibration. Sure enough when we removed the light you could hear something rattling inside. In fact vibration is a problem for any light in the cowl. Since the guy with the RV had his in the wing, vibration was not an issue. I was going to have to find a solution. Through some trail and error and a few different arrangement, Joe was able to open up the LED housing, isolate the offending part and attach it outside the housing with some additional wiring.

If you look close you can see the circuit board is now outside of the cowl light tube and insulated from any vibration. The wiring inside the LED was cheap also so we improved that. After a check on the ground I went flying and everything worked! I have flown with the wig-wag on all the time without any failures. I really can't thank Joe enough for coming up with this solution.