The plan is to have a filter for each contest band which can be auto switched by the transceiver – perfect for the NFD run and spotting stations.
The first job was to wind the 48 toroidal inductors, half of which were either tri or quadrafilar. This took me most of the week and resulted in some sore fingers for this office-bound monkey. You can see one set of completed torroids below.....
1) I have always relied on the solder to provide flux when soldering. The smaller solder I bought for SM work clearly doesn't have enough flux and my new flux pen, bought following GM3SEK's recommendation, makes all the difference. I am now a flux convert!
2) I often work under surgical microscopes and have over 15 years experience of manipulating things at high magnification. As a result this part of working with SMDs does not worry me at all and to start with I used a pair of old (but functional) electron microscopy forceps to manipulate the SM caps. I my professional life I find these good to tie 10/0 (0.07mm) sutures but found out today that they are too fine to stop the chips "pinging" across the workshop. A rummage in the lab turned up a pair of "rat tooth" forceps that did the job much better.
So, all in all, a lot of progress made. It seems I have lost a strip of 1203 caps, but being as I need to kit out a third set of boards that AGN offered without parts, I will pick up the missing caps in a Farnell order next week. Perhaps I'll treat myself to a real set of SM forceps at the same time to keep my new found momentum going.