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bugdozer
03-27-2008, 12:50 PM
Growing up, my dad was an electrical and mechanical engineer for a couple of different government contractors. With ‘Mil Spec’ and ‘useful service life dates’ lets just say we had a lot of ‘out of date’ stuff around our house. Tinker heaven! Now, after spending over twenty-five years in the electronics and communications fields, there are not a lot of connector types out there I have not gazed upon and there has always been a constant on the gender type. ‘The gender is dictated by the contacts, not the shell.’ RJ type connectors don't count as the generally suck.

In a recent order from ReadyHeli, I ordered what I thought was a female Futaba connector as I am shortening my servo leads. The receiver has pins, male, and the servo connector has holes, female. After a few emails back and forth with ReadyHeli and them telling me that “female had pins and male had slots” all I could say was WTF!!
I have done some looking around and it seems in the RC world, relating to radio equipment only, the male and female roles have been reversed, depending on the shell to dictate gender type. Ok fine, but why? My older boat radio and some long dead car radios have the original Futaba G connectors. The servo connectors have pins, male, and the receiver has holes, female. Did Futaba want to stick with the same gender reference when they moved over to the J connector or is there some other dark reason for this, as it makes no sense to me? Anybody?

mongo
03-27-2008, 08:17 PM
more a case of, "simple things for simple minds".

don't spend too much time trying to make r/c stuff fit in with the world of logic, it will drive ya mad.

bugdozer
03-28-2008, 09:59 AM
don't spend too much time trying to make r/c stuff fit in with the world of logic, it will drive ya mad.

Oh, it's too late for that. :)

ErichF
03-28-2008, 05:50 PM
I have always gone by the gender of the wire terminal. A female servo end will have a male plastic connector.

So, the universal thinking is to look at the actual electrical connection when identifying a connector gender.

phunk
08-18-2008, 03:42 PM
Just to clarify before I order the wrong connectors, the gender is determined by the housing? So the connector on a servo is male?

Would be easier if readyheli didn't have the same pic for both kits. :)

bugdozer
08-18-2008, 07:34 PM
Just to clarify before I order the wrong connectors, the gender is determined by the housing? So the connector on a servo is male?

Yes, receiver is female, servo is male.

ErichF
08-18-2008, 08:38 PM
The connectors in the housing of a servo lead are female. The pins on a reciever are male. This follows standard electrical terminology.

The confusion is when different vendors don't follow this standard, and lable servo ends as male (the housing is male, not the terminals). I went by this erroneous lable once and ordered a bunch of the wrong ends.

CALL THEM and confirm what you are getting.

bugdozer
08-18-2008, 10:46 PM
Oh, don't start this up again. The entire world, except RC, judges the gender by the conductors not the shell. Whoever decided the RC gender did it flat WRONG, so in RC, the gender is judged by the shell. That makes the receiver female and the servo lead is male. Maybe this is hold over from the old days where the servo leads had actual pins protruding from them that went into holes on the receiver and they were too lazy to change the naming convention. :thumbdown:

ErichF
08-18-2008, 11:06 PM
I'm not starting anything...I want the guy to get the right ends for his servos...unlike me. Hence, the suggestion to CALL and ASK what he'll be getting, since the pics online won't show it.

bugdozer
08-18-2008, 11:22 PM
I'm not starting anything...I want the guy to get the right ends for his servos...unlike me. Hence, the suggestion to CALL and ASK what he'll be getting, since the pics online won't show it.

I know, I know, I just went round and round about this a while back, thus the thread. It was very frustrating and no one could give a straight answer. Calling won't help. If he needs the connectors for his servo leads, order male. I promise they will be correct.

If I'm coming across as grouchy right now, well it's because I'm, uaa, grouchy. I usually avoid posting while grouchy. sorry....