When a single wire just won’t do.

By Stein Bruch

I thought I’d start this article out with a fancy definition of what a connector is, but when I looked in the dictionary for a good explanation, I found it simply states “a thing that connects”! Well, because that’s pretty obvious and also not helpful to our discussion, we’ll take a closer look at connectors as they relate to airplanes.

These four standard-density D-sub connectors—with 9, 15, 25 and 37 circuits—share pin size. Three rows of pins usually means a high-density D-sub and smaller pins.

Generally, connectors are used more for convenience than necessity. They allow an airliner to have a complete engine change done in hours instead of days, and they let us quickly and easily remove things from our airplanes (like wings, lights and avionics) while also making future maintenance easier. …

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