The adapter you receive may look slightly different than the one above. This depends on our suppliers and what they can provide us with.

Overview

These instructions are for preparing a flash shoe adapter--shown to the left--to connect to an RCA jack on a trigger box. This will allow the trigger circuit to actuate a flash unit directly.

Parts

The following parts are provided with the Flash-to-PC Adapter (FA2) kit:

2-conductor cable, 3-foot length

Flash shoe adapter

RCA plug (male)

2-inch length heat shrink tubing, 3/32-inch diameter

3-inch length heat shrink tubing, 3/16-inch diameter

Tools

You'll need the following tools:

Wire stripper

15- or 30-watt soldering iron and solder

Wet sponge or towel

Lighter or matches to shrink HST

Soldering Tips Solder in a well-lit, well-ventilated, open area. Avoid contact with all metal surfaces on the iron. Keep the tip of the soldering iron clean by wiping it against a wet sponge or towel before and after each use. A clean tip should look shiny and silvery; any yellow or black material on the tip will get into the solder and may weaken your solder joint. Once the tip of your soldering iron is clean, touch a bit of solder to the tip just before use. This is called tinning, and helps the solder run more evenly. Heat the connection to be soldered by holding the soldering iron to it, until solder applied at the junction between the two melts and flows freely. This ensures the connection and the solder are both hot enough to yield a good solder joint. This should take no more than 10-15 seconds. After the connection is heated, try to get solder along the entire length of the connection by briskly moving the solder and iron along. Avoid touching only the solder to the connection, and then the soldering iron to the solder to melt it onto the connection. The connection will be cooler than the melted solder and won’t form a good solder joint. Let new solder joints cool for several seconds before examining them. There should be solder all the way around the connection, forming a rigid joint. When done, unplug your soldering iron and let it cool.

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Preparing the flash adapter cord

The flash shoe adapter is shown to the left. With a pair of wire strippers, cut the cord about 3" (8 cm) from the plug end. Set the section with the plug aside in case you ever want to reconnect it. For the rest of these instructions, you'll be working with the end of the cord having the flash shoe.

Stripping the wires

Flash shoe adapter: Refer to the photo to the left. Strip back 1.5” (4 cm) of the outer black insulation being careful not to cut the inner conductors. This will reveal red and white conductors. Then strip back about 1” (2.5 cm) of insulation from the red and white wires.

Trigger cable: Refer to the photo to the right. At one end of the cable, strip the outer gray insulation back by 2" (5 cm). This will reveal the red and black wires inside. Strip the individual wires back 3/4" (2 cm).

Applying heat shrink tubing and making connections

Cut the smaller diameter section of heat shrink tubing into two 1-inch lengths. Slip one length over each of the output cable wires as shown in the upper photo to the left.

Twist the red wire of the adapter cord together with the red wire of the output cord, and twist the white wire of the adapter cord together with the black wire of the output cord as shown in the lower photo to the left. Be sure that the total length of exposed conductor is shorter than the length of the the heat shrink tubing that will cover the splices.

Solder the twisted wires and clip off any stray wire strands. Keep the soldering iron well away from the heat-shrink tubing so that it won't shrink prematurely. The soldered splices are shown to the right.

Shrinking the tubing around the wires

Slide the heat shrink tubing over each of the solder splices so that the wires are completely insulated from each other. Using a lighter or a match, move the flame smoothly back and forth along the entire length of the tubing, with the tip of the flame just beneath as shown to the left. If you hold the flame too long in one spot or too closely to the tubing, you will notice smoke. If this happens, lower your flame and continue moving it back and forth. The tubing will visibly shrink, and will be acceptably tight-fitting after only 10-15 seconds of heating. The result is shown to the right.

Shrinking the tubing around the cable

Slide the larger diameter piece of heat shrink tubing over the gray cable as shown in thephoto to the left. Position the tubing so that it covers the entire spliced area of the wires and overlaps the gray insulation on one end and the black insulation on the other. Then shrink the tubing. The result is shown in the photo to the right.