Some soldering work on the HF convertor ... / 2013-08-24

Some soldering work on the HF convertor kit for the rtl-sdr stick today. I noticed I haven't mentioned the progress of this electronics building work yet.

HF active antenna kit PCB printed side.

HF active antenna kit PCB component side.

The main board of the HF active antenna kit (a mini-whip, based on the excellent work by Roelof PA0RDT has done) is finished. Soldering the antenna-plate to the amplifier has failed sofar: soldering two bigger areas of copper together with a soldering iron designed for electronics work fails. And a small inductor between antenna plate and amplifier might be a good idea too reading the design, it would improve reception above 20 MHz where I want to have a listen to the 10 meter amateur band too (28.000 MHz - 29.700 MHz). There is also an indicator led included which I will solder in place once the print is tested and ready to be mounted in a housing (PVC pipe seems to be quite popular for this). I plan to mount the led in such a way the housing doesn't have to be opened to check the status.

HF upconvertor kit PCB printed side.

HF upconvertor kit component side.

Next soldering project is the HF upconvertor kit. I'm working on it at the moment, finding time for soldering and working very carefully. Not careful enough: the kit contains one length of wire for winding 4 coils and I found out at the fourth coil that I took a bit too much wire for the first three ones. Time to visit the electronics shop again, to get wire for winding coils. I checked the collection of parts at the radio club but there was no winding coil wire of 0.8mm.

I ordered the kits from Van Dijken Electronica, a Dutch shop in electronics, quite popular with amateur radio hobbyists.

• Bouwpakketje actieve antenne 10 KHz - 20 MHz(max 30 MHz) Kit mini-whip antenna
• Bouwpakket HF converter voor de rtl sdr sticks DC - 65 MHz Kit HF convertor

And yes, it's more difficult than first thought to take usable pictures of printed circuit boards.