> I need some recommendations on a soldering > station and also approx cost if you know it.
I'm having good luck with the Hakko 936 I bought from www.wassco.com for $88.50. Read the recommendations scattered throughout the Elecraft site (Builder Resources has several articles) and you'll find all you need for tools at Wassco. I tried using Digi-Key (www.digikey.com) but what a horrible Web site!! They've scanned their print catalog into PDFs and you have to copy the part number from the catalog into an order form. This is like "e-commerce circa 1995". The only thing lamer would be if they just gave you the PDFs for the catalog and had you print out an order form and mail it in. Mouser (www.mouser.com) was slightly better but still has a print catalog orientation. You can't get to pictures of anything until you follow several layers of links, and then it's PDFs of their catalog pages with tiny line drawings. At least you don't have to copy the part numbers to the order form. Wassco is organized by product category and manufacturer and has nice color pictures of everything they sell. They have a print catalog you can view online, but it's not necessary to look at it in order to place an order. I didn't bother to figure out if their prices were more expensive than the other sources because it was so hard to figure anything out on those other sites. As a person who has put together several Web sites including rolling my own e-commerce site, the process of buying tools for my K1 project was an interesting study in Web design and marketing. It's interesting that an industry that might be considered "high tech" (i.e. electronic parts and supplies) seems to lag "non-tech" industries (to pick one entirely at random: check out the simplicity of ordering knitting supplies at www.purlsoho.com). Craig WB0GUU _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
