Problems in producing lenses for the Nav light System have forced CCI to temporarily suspend this offer.
The problem CCI has been faced with from the very beginning is that the market for this design is very limited. Because the number of aircraft likely to use this device is not very large, there simply isn’t enough sales volume likely from which to recover the costs associated with building accurate, high quality, conventional molds.
As a result, each casting has to be trimmed by hand to the approximate shape on a band saw. Then it is machined and hand fitted to the base, drilled and counterbored, sanded and polished to a satin finish. The investment of time needed to do this is about five or six hours per lens! (There are four lenses on each system)
To compound matters, the special material used for making the lenses requires the use of an MEK-P catalyst. Bad Stuff!! A casting session was done on a Friday to insure at least 2-1/2 days over a weekend for the castings to fully cure. By mid day Monday, however, everyone in the building was experiencing side affects from the casting fumes produced 3 days earlier!
However, CCI will not attempt any production of these units for sale to others until a viable, cost effective solution to lens production is found. We have too much development cost invested to give up on this. We know there is a solution. When we find one, owners of record will be given the option of exchanging their old lenses for new ones. Until all these things fall into place, we can not accept any additional orders.
The fact that we have never experienced this in
over fourteen years of producing parts is of little consolation. We created
expectations prematurely and have inconvenienced some of you as a result.
We should not have done that and for that we apologize.
New Design Pending
The appearance of many LED's is due to the refractive properties of
acrylic. The apparent tint is due to the same optical properties.
The lenses are clear.
The new design dispenses completely with the flashing strobe portion. The halogen strobe has been developed as a seperate kit and moved elswhere. Powerful LED's have replaced the smaller halogen bulbs in the Marker-Position lights. The intent is to use colored high intensity LEDS in a one piece molded, clear acrylic part. Acrylic material has vastly superior UV stability to the casting resins used opreviously and, because it is one piece, does not represent the sealing problems against moisture that the old designed posed.
The strobe still uses a halogen bulb but instead of being integral with the position lights, is a seperate component designed to be installed on top of the engine cowling and another in the belly of the plane. The old position of the strobes" (top of winglet) made for great visual detection provided the plane was not directly above you. This "blind Spot" was not to our liking. This change not only elliminates the blind spot but will be available as a seperate kit.
Seperate strobe unit allows more flexability in mounting, resolves sealing
problems and simplifies the manufacture of the Nav-Position lights
The new design cures many manufacturing problems, is cleaner aerodynamicaly and is esthetically more pleasing. It will however, require making special injection molds to give us a finished product that is free of the many hours of intensive labor. Other priorities continue to delay development of the molds needed toproduce the lens. We are searching for a supplier of cost-effective cast or extruded solid acrylic. Once that hurdle is past, we hope to be find a shop who can cut the lens geometry on a CNC, 5 axis water jet.
No developmental activity is expected on this
project until late summer 2004 so a completion date can not be projected.
Note: THis animation takes about with a 56 K Baud Modem
Note this is the old design!
While this unit is designed to fit the top of the Whitcomb winglet, it
can be just as easily
turned sideways and used
at the base of the winglet or at the tip of conventional wings. This unit
does have the airfoil shape.
Unfortunately, we could
not charge enough to cover the amount of hand labor needed to create this
device.
CCI
P.O. Box 494
Milford, New Jersey
08848
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