Landing gear woes solved?

Somewhere along the way, Brian suggested that as old as I am, and having flown only one plane (not true, I've flown about six different planes, but no solos in them) that I should look into getting a device to remind me to check gear location. I figured that the gear position is the only thing different about flying this plane now as opposed to wheels only flying. He pointed out: "Isn't your life worth $600?" (approx. cost of a gear position reminder device that calls out wheels down for runway landing, or wheels up for water landing)
I guessed that it was, and ordered one...it'd give me something to do while waiting for the next lesson. So I got the device from Spruce, and it needed info from the gear telling it where the wheels actually were....position switches. So I set about building a small switchbox containing two microswitches, one that would close (complete the circuit to ground) when wheels were up, and one that would close when wheels were down, and I wired them into the plane. I then built a small subpanel ( running out of room on the main instrument panel) and mounted a green light (runway landing) and a blue light (water landing). This worked great! Now instead of watching for the pressure gauges to indicate when the wheels were at their end positions, I had these really cool lights that came on to tell me the same thing...or so I thought.

I got this panel mounted on the plane the day before I left for Oshkosh. Took it up for a flight or two and everything was ginger-peachy. Weather kept me from going until Monday of Oshkosh week, and when I did get going (west from here [southern Michigan], then around Chicago, then north) I had a 10-15 mph headwind until I turned north. I finally got there, stopping once for fuel/**** call, then landed on 27 at OSH, and made the turnoff to head for Seaplane parking. An attendant crossed his arms in front of me and I stopped. "You have smoke coming from your right float" I got out and the right float was dragging on the pavement. A small group had gathered and they lifted the wing while I ran the "'down" switch. The wheel locked into position, I thanked them and taxied off to my eventual parking place.

When I had changed my procedure from watching the gauges max out as an indicator of "locked and loaded", to watching the light come on, I overlooked the fact that the light was indicating that ONE wheel, the left one, (the ONLY one with the switches) was locked, and I still needed to observe the gauge for max pressure...the only true (more on this later) indicator of maximum wheel movement.

More later...gotta go install a bladder tank into a Republic SeaBee.

Lynn