Mounting control stick wiring connector to airframe

TLDR

• Attached the control stick wire harness connectors to the airframe

Details

Previously I already connected the wires for both control sticks.

However I made a small mistake. The CPC connector male side has 4 screws to secure onto skin. I missed this detail so my connection just lets them hang below the control stick.

I tried a few times but I can’t find a good way to secure the connectors and wires like this. So I decided to do it properly per Midwest Panel Builder’s plan.

The plan is straightforward: I need to pull the control stick side connector out of the control base, make a appropriately sized hole below the control stick, secure the male side connector through the hole, reconnect the 2 connectors.

However the space access is really small, so it took a really long time to get it done.

Extract pins

The connector went through a tiny hole below the control stick previously. I needed to get the wires and connector back out. So I had to remove the pins and dissemble the connector. The copilot side was easy, but several pins got stuck from the pilot side when trying to get them out of the CPC using a pin extactor. I ended up damaging a few pins. So I cut the wire and re-attached some new pins.

Enlarging holes

This is the most time consuming part due to access.

Using a small hole cutter, I made two holes (one for each control stick) just slightly larger than the CPC bulkhead connector.

The CPC bulkhead has 4 holes for self-tapping screws. I just really don’t have good access to drill 4 holes on each side, so I only drilled 1 and used JB Weld to glue the connector in place.

Reconnecting connectors

Once the hole was drilled and the male connector was secured, reconnecting them too 5 seconds.

But before that, I took a multi-meter and tested button/pin connections. Everything functioned as they should.