When I built my K2 spring 06 - and soldered along, day and night after night. I always made sure to have my soldering tip set a high enough temperature, and tried as best I could to get very good solder flow with my Kester solder - both onto the component lead, and the PCB's pad and "hole".
The "hole" and Elecraft's 2-sided PCB's always puzzled me a bit - as I was never sure if there were pads, plated-thru hole, and lower pads - every time. In other words when I soldered a component on the top side of the RF Board - and got a great solder flow - was I supposed to look to see if there was a pad and "great flow" on the bottom side too? OR DOES THE PLATED-THRU HOLE, TAKE CARE OF THAT? Apparently I must have figured right - none of my solder connections ever gave any trouble, and K2 checked out right, after every section build! Probably lucky. "Solder Flow" - with lead based solder, and its tin content, etc. - reminds me of my first career in the newspaper field. I was one of those rare birds who fixed linotype hot-metal typecasting machines for 10 years. In those days there were magic crayon-like sticks we threw into the metal pot, and daily skimming of the dross that built up on the top layer of the pot's liquid lead/tin/antimony metal mixture. Temperature was critical then, to ensure razor sharp newspaper type letters on the top of each ejected "line of type" that came out of those black beauty machines. I think I could still fix one of them in my sleep. Our daily newspaper in Buffalo, had 49 machines - for 5 editions a day. By the by, linotype metal supposedly the best for casting pistol bullets. Extra hard. Kept a guy out of trouble ..... Fred FL __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [email protected] 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
