For fellow wire haters out there, here's a way that I figured out for attaching a 6 channel Hobby King receiver directly to the APM 2.5 without those pesky wires and connectors. The complete assembly of the APM 2.5 and the receiver is now only 18 grams and the clutter of wires goes away. I've flight tested this setup with the Turnigy 9x and it seems to work exactly as it did with the larger Turnigy 9x V2 8ch radio, less about 20 grams of stuff.

Here's a link the receiver I used if you're interested. I simply disassembled the case removed the old connector and used the connection that came with the APM 2.5 (with two unneeded connections cut off). You will also notice a bit of strain relief that I added to the receiver antenna, as that connection is now a bit exposed with the packaging removed.

The one thing that I still need to figure out is how to either make the three position switch on my Turnigy 9x transmitter connect to channel 5 or have the APM software look at channel 6 instead of 5 for flight modes, as I previously connected channel 6 on my receiver to channel 5 on the APM. Any suggestion of ideas on how I might do this?