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Harness wire connection methods

Flying Canuck

Well Known Member
Patron
So here's the scenario, you have one or more wires coming out of harness A (e.g. audio panel) that need to connect one-to-one with a wire or wires coming out of harness B (e.g. radio). Happens a whole pile of times behind most panels. As you know, there are a lot of ways to make this connection. Here are some of the ways I can think of.

  • One crimp connector (butt splice)
  • Two crimp connectors (pick a type)
  • Crimp ring terminal to terminal block
  • 2 dsub pins covered with clear shrink tube
  • solder sleeve
  • solder with clear shrink tube
  • molex connector (combine with other connections or not)
  • dsub connector (combine with other connections)

I'm sure this is a "primer wars" type of question. Each of us will have a connection type that will get the best of us most of the time. I have each and every one of these in my plane. I'm doing some early planning for some upgrades (audio panel, nav/comm radios, IFR navigator), I'm just wondering
1) what do the professional panel builders do?
2) is one of these better than the rest?
3) are any of these bad ideas?

Bonus question: How about a 2 to 1 splice?
 
First decide why you want a connector in the first place.

For example, if you plan on having a removable panel (highly recommended) a couple of 25 pin D connectors will do most everything you want. That way the panel comes out of the plane and on the bench in a few minutes. For you this would be for the connectors from the panel to the rest of the plane (headphones, PPT, external audio, comm flip/flop, GPS serial to your ELT, etc.).

For power, Molex is the easy way.

If you just want to splice (like between panel trays), solder and shrink tube, then bundle the joints in a cable to immobilize.

Having trays with harnesses already done is less preferably to wiring the trays yourself (so that you don’t have connectors or splices). For retrofit I can see doing splices instead of redoing tray connectors.

My rule “never be on your back with your head under the panel”.

Carl
 
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