I've done basic stripping/soldering of wires on car audio before. Whenever I've connected two of those wires, it was usually at the ends, using wirenuts/wirecaps, or if inline, I've used ScotchLok type connectors. And working with the larger guage wire is fairly easy.

On these small electric devices (Blade CX) there are no strands of wire, and each wire is a very small guage. Can anyone give me some tips on the proper method to strip the cover from the small wires? Also, proper method to solder/shrink wrap? LED lights came in for the blade CX, and I'd like to get to work on them
Thanks

If the wires are real small tie them in a square knot then slip a piece of heat tubing of the knot and use a hair dryer to shrink the tubing. If the wire is to large to do that the hold the ends of each other (about 1/2 to 1 inch) ---======----- and twist the 2 ends over each other ---xxxxx--- then slip a piece of heat tubing of the twist and use a hair dryer to shrink the tubing.

You can buy wire strippers from your hardware store ranging for $2 to $20+. If you are uncomfortable with stripper thin wires, buy the more expensive stripper which pretty much gaurantees perfect stripping every time. The expensive strippers have locking mechanism and dedicate slots for different gauge wires.
There are also smaller heat shrink tubes made for the thinner wires. I think radio shack may still carry them. The wires you'll be using should be stranded and pretty thin so just twist them together, apply solder and shrink.

When we added lights we used the small 3.5 vdc led bulbs with a watch battery (3.5 vdc) as a power source and put a switch on the front of the main battery velcro holder. We used 22 ga. wire. To strip this wire you really only need minimal fingernails to pinch and pull the cover off. The connections were soldered together then taped. To connect the battery we stripped about 1 inch of wire curled it and laid it on a piece of black electrical tape with a piece of tin foil on top. This whole piece is only the size of the battery face. We did both pos. and negative contacts in this manner. Then wrapped the contacts onto the batt. with a piece of black taped stretched so as to squeeze the whole thing together.. Attached it to the side of the 4-1 with another short pice of electical tape.

Has anyone simply patched the led's into the main battery using about a 500ohm resistor? It shouldn't reduced flight times too much as we are talking about 20-40 milliamps (thousands of an amp) or so. I've been considering doing this to my BCX.

I stripped the wire, both + and -, where the battery connector leads to the 4-1. Used a sharp blade and just trimmed a bit of insulation off, put a small bit of solder on when holding the thin wires from the led's, confirmed that it worked, and then coated the bare area's with some epoxy to insulate again. Works great.

I ran into problems soldering. I was using a Coleman ColdHeat soldering iron, and some old solder I found laying around. In addition, I needed a conical tip for my ColdHeat, and didn't have one. And I inadvertently cut through the actual power wire leading to the 4 and 1. I ended up twisting the tiny LED wires (Two..one for the front LEDs and one for the rear LED's) together and inserting them along with 1/2 of the 4 and 1 power wire into one end of a Radio Shack bullet connector, and inserting the other half of the 4 and 1 power wire into the other end, then crimping both ends of the bullet connector to securely hold all wires in place. Works fine.