[toast0]

> Page 50: Hey, that's how you're supposed to use heatshrink! Wow, I've been doing it wrong for years.

How did you get it to stay if you didn't do the ends first?

> Page 62: Mildly surprised that they don't want crimped connections soldered, but I suppose that compromises flexibility, and shouldn't add all that much strength if they're properly crimped.

Soldering a crimp really only helps if you've done a poor job of crimping; but it's relatively easy to inspect a crimp. If you solder, you could cause a previously excellent crimped join to be not so great, and it may be hard to see if the crimp opened a bit due to heat, or other things.

> Page 76: Wow, had never heard of "connector saver" jumpers before. Sounds bananas, but I suppose if you're going to test everything ten times for every launch, it's mostly reasonable.

I've seen these in stores for ISA/PCI slots; since all connectors have a limited number of mating cycles, it makes sense to use them to reduce the number of cycles used by testing, since you can't easily go and re-seat your connectors once you've launched the thing.

[adestefan]

> Soldering a crimp really only helps if you've done a poor job of crimping; but it's relatively easy to inspect a crimp. If you solder, you could cause a previously excellent crimped join to be not so great, and it may be hard to see if the crimp opened a bit due to heat, or other things.

Solder joints are also more likely to crack and fail than crimped joints due to vibration. You solder as little as possible in air and space craft.

[engi_nerd]

And much of the soldering is done with solder ferrules (aka solder zaps) that sit over a wire and release solder when exposed to heat. This is all contained in a neat little package. The solder is ultimately connected to a wire that you can then run to a connector. This is how we usually will connect a braided shield to a component ground.