After this morning, except for a quick solder of the left wing’s nav light ground wire and terminating a big ring connector onto the engine end of the big yellow starter cable, the electrical wiring is complete on this airplane.

[Okay, technically not taking into account the mods that still need to be wired up in the future when I get to those tasks (all actuators): oil heat system and nose taxi light]

Also technically this is a 2-day post, as I spent nearly 3 hours terminating the wing light feeding wires out of the strakes into their respective 9-position D-Sub connectors.  Part of this task involved soldering ground pigtails to the shielded cables (one per light unit) and terminating those ground wires along with the others.  All told I used all 9 pins of each DB9 connector.

I’m not too worried about water or moisture getting into the DB9 connectors since I’ll be adding RTV where the wires enter the connector backshell and heat-shrinking the junction of the two mating connectors.  But during the occasional times I’ll remove the wings, I honestly didn’t want to mess with the unscrewing and screwing of those small 4-40 screws during each wing install and removal.  That was driving me towards using the much bulkier Deutsch or Molex connectors until I saw a hack for securing D-sub connectors on the VANs forum: Paul Dye and others simply use zip ties or safety wire to secure the two connector halves together.  EZ-PZ!

DAY 2:  Early this morning I scooted over to the hangar and terminated the 9 wires coming out of each wing with sockets (after soldering on the shield ground pigtails) and then terminated those into 9-position D-sub connectors as well.  I then installed the gray back shells.

I then took the day off for my wife’s birthday and spent a good half of the day at the beach watching a music festival before heading out for the evening for some food and libations.

Tomorrow I’m heading with Jess down to Wilmington for another full day of birthday festivities before getting back to work on the plane Monday.

Yes, a small break… then back to gettin’ er done!