[time-nuts] soldering QFN (was: GPS down converter question)

2015-12-03 Thread Attila Kinali
Salut, On Wed, 2 Dec 2015 18:39:55 -0500 paul swed wrote: > Just adding that this is home brew so no real boards. At the IF level thats > both large enough and easy enough to add to a ground plane. So its > reasonable to build the basics and add stuff as needed. > The LNA

Re: [time-nuts] soldering QFN (was: GPS down converter question)

2015-12-03 Thread paul swed
Attila sorry flipped some letters. On Thu, Dec 3, 2015 at 10:06 AM, paul swed wrote: > Atilla, > Thanks you have read what I have written and further your experience > aligns with mine for hacking these chips at least into the GHz range. I > suspect it really falls apart in

Re: [time-nuts] soldering QFN (was: GPS down converter question)

2015-12-03 Thread paul swed
Atilla, Thanks you have read what I have written and further your experience aligns with mine for hacking these chips at least into the GHz range. I suspect it really falls apart in the 2-3 GHz and above region. But I have built a lot in the 1.296 GHz region so have that experience at least.

[time-nuts] soldering QFN (was: GPS down converter question)

2015-12-03 Thread Mark Sims
These are a fairly nice and cheap hot air tool. The really nice thing is they have been reverse-engineered and an open-source firmware is available. I have one. Have also built a nice reflow oven out of a $40 Walmart toaster oven... I used the temperature control PID code out of Lady

[time-nuts] soldering QFN (was: GPS down converter question)

2015-12-03 Thread Mark Sims
OSHSTENCILS.COM make excellent laser cut kapton solder paste stencils for dirt cheap. I have had stencils in the mail the same day I sent them gerber files. OSHPARK does good work for boards, but they can be expensive for larger boards or quantities. I usually use gojgo.com (in China, but I

Re: [time-nuts] soldering QFN (was: GPS down converter question)

2015-12-03 Thread paul swed
Mark My thinking is to buy one from the guy who sold 2560 of them. Others have a far lower count. So figured he was the right one. Oh another project. Hack the solder station. Maybe I will wait a while on that. On Thu, Dec 3, 2015 at 2:55 PM, Mark Sims wrote: > These are a