I'm back from 6 days in Arizona and this is actually the 20th of September, not the 10th.  I am putting up the stuff I just didn't get posted before leaving.

First, a few notes on the trip.  It takes about 4 hours in the Mooney to fly to or from Prescott.  We decided on a 5:30 a.m. departure from Prescott.  The JPI said we had 24 gallons, so no fuel required to make Las Vegas.  Measuring the tanks, added up to about 14 gallons.  Well, had to wait for the FBO to open and get another 20 gallons.  That happened at 7:00.  We had locked the keys in the rental car and left it in the parking lot, so we spent the time sitting in the airplane.  Finally we fueled and headed for Vegas at 10,500 and 120 knots!  Yep, a 35 knot headwind.  Well, it turned out that the JPI was correct, but with dodging a couple large thundercells and a constant headwind, we burned exactly 22 gallons between Prescott and Las Vegas!  That may be an all-time high fuel burn in that airplane, but the extra fuel proved to be worth the wait.

Now, about building RVs, I started the morning by replacing the plastic tubing in the wing with aluminum because I will be running heated pitots.  Pitot"s"?  Yes, I've decided to have 2 pitot systems.  They will both be heated.  Don't ask me all about why, just accept that as what I have decided to do.  Below, I'm flaring the tubing at the wing end.

OK, here's the completed tubing flare and yes, I remembered to put the parts on the tubing first.  Well, I almost forgot....

Here's a picture as best I could get one, that show the tubing passing through the inboard rib at the point of the arrow.  You can't see the rib in the dark, but it's there.  I opted to ditch the rubber grommet in favor of a pass-through fitting.  I felt it was important for the tubing to be free of vibration contact, even with the rubber grommet

Maybe it is clearer to just show the fitting coming out of the inboard wing rib.  At this stage, far from the heat of the pitot, it can return to the same plastic tubing as the rest of the pitot static system.

In the middle of the wing, in first bay inboard from the aileron bellcrank inspection plate, the tubing is bent down (the wing is on its back) to meet the pitot tube.  I will flare this end later, when I am sure about the fit.

Moving on from the pitot system, I cut a couple of holes in some scrape aluminum and used the dremel to smooth up the edges.  Bill will use them to make up the brackets for the wingtip strobes.  He really is sticking with this electrical stuff and building most of the pieced along the way.

One thing I regretted buying was this cheap brake.  It sat on the shelf unused until a few days ago.  Now I'm happy as can be with it.  It really is just fine for small bends in small parts.  I used it to put side bends in the strobe brackets to stiffen them.

Here is the first pass at bending the stiffeners into the brackets.

After some trimming and a few more bends, the strobe can be temporarily fitted into the hole.  The bracket will serve as both a sturdy removable mount and as a standoff so the strobe head doesn't protrude too far through the hole in the wingtip.

This is just a side view so you can see how it is stiffened with the bends.  It makes a sturdy and lightweight little bracket.

Finally, nutplates are added for both the mounting of the bracket and the mounting of the strobe to the bracket.

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