May 14, 2004

I got a good amount of time in on the plane tonight, and had a quick beer with Mike afterwards. I spent tonight doing the stick grip side of the connector and completing the wiring in the floor.

Here’s the male connector side. These are the pins you’re supposed to solder wires to! Since they’re so dense, it was pretty much impossible to do. Last night, me and Mike were chatting about how to do it, and beating around ideas, and it turned out that female D-Sub crimp pins fit on these pins perfectly!

So, here are some D-Subs crimped to the wires and heatshrink going on….

And all connected. The clear heatshrink you see there was then slid over these connectors to make sure they all stayed together. Turned out great!

The fully assembled connector…. I put heatshrink over the strain relief too, to make sure it wasn’t going anywhere.

Here’s a shot of it all snug inside the tube. I need to put a removable clip in the tube to stop the connector sliding into the tube when you connect it. Getting the length here was critical, because the wires in the tube will only compress so far, and you need to be able to see it to connect the female side. In this picture, the connector is about flush with the end of the stick.

I finally got the stick wiring done on this side, although, it’s as yet untested! All these connections, I’m bound to have done something wrong somewhere! I have been double checking everything with the multimeter as I’ve been going along though. Hopefully, it’ll all be good! So, if you REALLY LIKE wiring, I’d definitely recommend getting yourself a couple of these stick grips! A multitude of functions, and very nice, but an awful lot of work!