Tonight I finished making a fitting to hold a d-sub connector, which will allow the right hand control stick to be easily removed. The fitting is made of three sheets of aluminum, and slips over the existing steel fitting for the molex connector. It’s held in place with rivets and is very solid.
On the left stick, since I don’t plan to remove it, I’m going to skip the d-sun connector and just use insulated d-sun pins held together with heat-shrink.