So I had assorted other things going on today, but I did find an hour to get in a bit of shop time. I skim sanded the micro I added previously for pinhole filling, then got to looking at locating where I wanted the tail light wire to enter the new bulkhead. This involved a fair bit of head-scratching and staring off into space. Optimally, I’d place the hole in line with the rudder hinge point, so that it’d have no movement at all relative to the fuselage, but I didn’t want the wires possibly rubbing on the rudder hardware. In the end, I chose to put the hole on centerline, but as far forward as possible. This is only about an inch or so off the hinge line, so it still doesn’t move much with the rudder going stop-to-stop.
Here’s a look at the finished hole with the wire in place for checking clearances and such. When it’s done, that hole will have a snap bushing, but first I have to do all the fiberglass finish work on this piece:
One fun bit that came out of this tinkering: what I thought was a generous amount of wire from back when I built the harnesses is, in fact, just barely enough. I kind of wonder whether this will end up being too short once I add the conduit run I’m putting inside the fairing. Worst case, I can just extend the two wires…it just might make routing things through the conduit slightly more interesting:
