Wow! This electrical work takes a lot of time... and checking. Over another 6 days, with Elayne's help I soldered the connections for D-Subs J4 and J7 and installed them into the Harness SupportTray. Then in a real team effort we check the continuity of all four of the D-Subs that we had put together. Using a multi-meter we verified every wire that runs from the Flight Deck through a D-Sub and out to the end of the wire somewhere else in the plane. Of the dozens and dozens of wires that we had cut and then soldered into D-Subs we (what happened to I? haha) had only got two wrong, i.e. mounted onto the wrong pins in the D-Sub connector. I should mention that I didn't realize at the start that the pins are already pre-numbered (between 9 and 37 pins depending upon size of the D-Sub) in each connector. So I had come up with my own numbering scheme which worked well enough. It took Elayne's younger and sharper eyes to spot the tiny stamped numbers after much of the soldering was done and of course it was slightly different than mine. But it doesn't matter how the pins are numbered as long as you are consistent in your approach (and keep a record). By using these D-Sub connectors mounted in the Harness SupportTray it will be possible in the future to easily disconnect the wires running between the Tray and the Flight Deck and remove individual components mounted there or the whole Bow Deck in fact.
