MTR night 4

Tonight I worked on installing the through-hole parts, inductors, the PA, etc to largely complete the installation steps. I decided to wait to install the slide switches and the push button switches until I know what kind of case that I am going to install this in.

A lot of people will likely install this into an Altoids tin. While those are interesting looking I am considering some other options. I am looking at a small Pelican case and using a clear or a smoked piece of plastic for the  mounting plate within the case. If I choose to go that route I might need to consider different switches given the thickness of the plastic.  --Just an idea at this point... but an important point.

Total time: 2 hours

73 de NG0R

MTR night 3

I soldered down all of the smd capacitors on the bottom side of the board. I think that there were 46 parts in this step.

Total time: 90 minutes

73 de NG0R

MTR afternoon 2

I add the smd resistors and inductors to the bottom side of the board this afternoon. The 33 parts took about 90 minutes. Most of that is removing the parts from the packaging and reading the parts placement diagram to figure out where the part is supposed to be soldered down .  I am using a cookie sheet (baking tray) under my board while I am doing assembly. In theory this helps to minimize loosing pieces.

Total time: 90 minutes

73 de NG0R

MTR night 2

I spent some time attaching the smd ICs to the bottom side of the board. Most of them are not very hard to attach accept for the TI mcu and the AD9834 which are TSSOP-28 and TSSOP-20 footprints.  If time permits on Sunday I will try to move on to the resistors on the bottom side of the board.

Total Time: 2 hours

73 de NG0R

MTR night 1

After work and the family activities were complete for the day I spent some time working on the MTR kit from Steve Weber. Tonight's activity was going through the parts list and validating the parts inventory. I separated all of the parts except for the SMT ICs in their seperate static bag. It looks like I have everything that I am expecting.

Total time: 30 minutes

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It has arrived!!!

The new MTR kit from Steve Weber KD1JV arrived in the mail today.

It is a dual band HF rig design with the idea of being trail friendly. (aka: very small)  This will probably be a 20/40 rig once I get it built.  This is part of the initial run of 150 for Steve's first release of this model.

73 de NG0R