Chapter 22 – Trio A/P pitch servo wiring

I didn’t really get anything major done today on the Long-EZ build.  I did watch a fair amount of football and did a good bit of research for tomorrow’s build activities.

One thing I decided to knock out was swapping out the wiring connector on the Trio Pro Pilot Autopilot from a Molex connector –which by now you probably know that I don’t care for– to an AMP CPC connector.

Trio pitch servo wiring

I started by removing the individual Molex pins from the Molex connector housing.

Trio pitch servo - Molex removed

I then cut off the Molex pins from each wire.

Trio pitch servo - connectors removed

I added a couple of pieces of shrink tubing both at the strain relief point coming out of the servo housing, and another piece that will end up close to the connector.  This latter piece will not only serve to help with strain relief, but also to maintain a good bit of twist in the wires for dampening any errant electromagnetic radiation.

Trio pitch servo - prepping wires

I had spent a good half hour confirming & updating the wiring schema from the Trio Pro Pilot manual. However, I didn’t confirm my original claim of pins vs. sockets on my sheet. My bad since I went with pins here, when I should have installed sockets.

Trio pitch servo - AMP pins installed

No big deal.  Normally pins or sockets wouldn’t matter, but since my pin side connector body has a flange on it, I had originally meant for it to stay hard-mounted in the aircraft, while the servo side connector would be removable (no flange).  It will mean just a slight modification to the mount on the side wall of the fuselage, meaning although this connector will be screwed in place it will also be easily removable.  I’d much rather do that than cut off perfectly good (and crimped!) pins and waste time & money for a slight re-tweaking of the P3 connector installation.  I mean, after all, how often am I really going to be removing & installing the pitch trim servo after it’s initially installed? (not many I hope!)

Trio pitch servo AMP CPC connector

Tomorrow I plan on focusing on finalizing the elevator control tube installation (flight controls) and the mounting of the pilot control stick grip.  In addition I plan on prepping the install of the autopilot pitch servo (above).  I’ll also most likely do some minor tweaks to the canard filler pieces as well.

 

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