Wiring continues

Guess the cat is out of the bag as I made the VP newsletter :). Wiring continues... I'm bogged down a little perfecting the final placement of items on the avionics shelf and figuring out the final placement of the MVP-50 engine monitor (see post below about that). I've also decided on a low cost solution for ground blocks. For wire sizes up to 18ga, I've decided to use a DB25 connector scheme. Basically it will work like this.

I got some 1/16" thick, double sided printed circuit board material from Frys. I'll cut a small pattern out of it that will fit inside a Shell housing for a DB25 female solder cup connector. On the side where the connector will go, you simply press the circuit board material into the two rows of solder cups edgewise. 1/16" thick board makes for a tight, but not too tight press fit. Then you solder each of the cups to the circuit board. Now drill a hole thru the board for the larger wire that will run to the ground buss and connect it to the circuit board making sure it will all fit inside the shell when it's assembled around it. Connect that to your ground buss and poof, when you need a ground you just add another male pin with a crimped wire and pin to the opposite male DB25 connector. You'll need to size the larger ground wire for the max size of current that the DB25 ground will provide. In my case, I think #10 or even #12 will work just fine. It might be a trick getting a lug onto the wire and screw connected to the circuit board, I haven't tried that yet. As a fall back, use the same process, but cut the board material so it hard mounting ears and don't use the shell halfs. A pretty easy and simple way to do grounds... All the credit goes to Bob Knuckolls tho, I just evolved the concept to use a solder cup connector and circuit board material instead of 2 wires soldered across the cups....

I'll take a set of pictures when I build my first one... I don't want to cut ground wires until I get all placement done first tho as I don't want to waste wire...