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Tubing Pass-through (coolest thing I learned this week)

bill.hutchison

Well Known Member
This is more of a retrofit/maintenance trick, but I was utterly delighted by this trick and thought I would share with some of the others who are new to this stuff.

Scenario - running all the new wires for a retrofit on a Ray Allen stick that has trim controls, AP disco + PTT and a spare. 6 wires total. My wiring penetrations under the seats and through the spar are pretty tight, and it's very, very hard to pass wires through them, especially thin, delicate wires.

The guy mentoring/helping me on the airplane suggested feeding a short length of spare plastic pitot tubing through the penetration, creating a nice, smooth channel to pass the wires through. As a bonus, it protects the wires, too.

What would have been a painstaking and difficult process became a 5-minute task. I was shaking my head at how simple it was.
 
A wire spoon is perfect for this - I couldn't be without mine: https://www.steinair.com/product/wire-spoon/

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The guy mentoring/helping me on the airplane suggested feeding a short length of spare plastic pitot tubing through the penetration, creating a nice, smooth channel to pass the wires through. As a bonus, it protects the wires, too.
I think if I could get a (1/4" OD?) Pitot tube through, I would try to use it as a fish to pull the cable through behind it... tape one to the other as smoothly as possible and pull carefully.

The wall thickness on the pitot tube takes up a lot of cross-sectional area in a pass-through.
 
I think if I could get a (1/4" OD?) Pitot tube through, I would try to use it as a fish to pull the cable through behind it... tape one to the other as smoothly as possible and pull carefully.

The wall thickness on the pitot tube takes up a lot of cross-sectional area in a pass-through.

I thought about that - I'm at a point where I still can do that, but there's also room inside the tube as well, so I think I'm good either way.
 
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