Eliminating Wire Bulk

While assembling my new Durafly BF110, I ran into a problem. The aircraft comes equipped with wing tip lights and a left wing landing light but the design was that the landing light be on all the time. Being a little more of a purist, I wanted it to be on only during landing. I could probably use my transmitter controlled switch connected to the AUX channel but I'd prefer to keep that open for other options.

After connecting the switch to the gear channel, I found the light worked but would be on when the landing gear was up. So, I grabbed a signal reverser and put it in line. It worked perfectly. Gear down- light on. Gear up- light off. The problem arose though, that after adding the signal reverser and a switch, there was a LOT more wires added. Anyone who owns this plane knows that the interior is quite cramped already so I decided to try and reduce the additional bulk.

I stripped the shrink wrap off both units, desoldered the inputs and then clipped the reverser output to about 1/2". I then grabbed a corner of an electronic breadboard and found it's hole spacing to be exactly the same as the solenoid pins.

I trimmed one of the input wires down to about 3" and soldered the three leads into one line of holes. I then added two sets of pins to connect the landing gear leads onto and connected the reversing switch to the backside with the pins correctly oriented. The output wires (clipped at 1/2" earlier) was soldered to the input of the transmitter controlled switch.

Since power was carried through all of this, I was able to power the landing light directly from the unit. I secured it all with a liberal dose of our favorite adhesive- hot glue- and wrapped it in shrink wrap for protection.

It seems to work beautifully, don't you think?

I managed to save this much room in a very cramped space.