I spent most of the Holiday period
finishing up the Main Board (TX, RCV, Keying, etc) for my Willamette
rig. I finished up the soldering last weekend and started boxing it up
using PCB (copper clad board) for the VFO enclosure and mounting the
Main Board on top of the VFO box.
The first items to be done was the cutting of the PCB material from an old large chunk sheet of PCB. It is quite amazing what a novice to this sort of work can do with a pair of tin snips and a dremel tool.
I should mention that the VFO must be in a RF-Tight enclosure to prevent stray RF from causing issues with the Main Board. This really provide for an excellant means of boxing up the Willamette as a showcase rig. There is nothing more satisifying than to be able to look at your work while using the rig. Looking at the three photo's above: the first is the large sheet of PCB I had on-hand to cut my pieces from. The next two photo's show one larger piece of PCB that was the same size as the Main Board. This piece serves as the bottom of the VFO enclosure with the Main Board will be used as the top of the enclosure. The four smaller pieces in the second picture are the four sides of the enclosure, of which one will serve as the front panel for the VFO control signals and VFO RF to exit from the enclosure.
Once the cutting and drilling was accomplished, I started assembling the VFO enclosure, as shown in the next set of photo's below:
The above left photo shows the box section of the enclosure with four stand-offs installed. These stand-offs hold the bottom and top (Main Board) together. An added benefit was that it made it much easier to get the four side pieces soldered into place. The right photo shows the completed VFO enclosure minus the top piece which is the Main Board. I layed a screw, stand-off and nut in the box to show how the stand-off was put together. The threaded end of the stand-off goes through one of the four corner holes in the bottom piece and a nut is attached. The top of the stand-off has a threaded hole in it...the Main Board also was drilled so I had matching four corner holes to put the nut through to attach the Main Board to top of the VFO enclosure. Before I could attached the Main Board, I had to install the VFO Board and wire up the control lines to the feed-thru caps and the RF signal to the BNC connector. Anymore these days, I tend to use a feed-thru cap for any control or RF signal that leaves a boxed enclosure. After building my W7ZOI spectrum analyzier, I found it is better to be safe than sorry when it comes to using or not using feed-thru caps!
OK, the enclosure is ready to have the VFO installed.
In the earlier days of my homebrewing Flying Pig projects, KB9BVN invented a miracle concept that allows for fast installation of circuit boards. Well, he actually uses this scheme for attaching most anything, including parts, pads, wiring, etc to a piece of copper clad board. Rumor has it that he once tossed a handful of parts into a brown paper bag, shot a large glob of hot glue into the bag, closed the top of the bag and shook the living daylights out of it. When he opened the bag and dumped out the contents, a state-of-the-art Multi-Pig Plus Tranceiver fell out in working condition. Remember what I said about its better to be safe than sorry....nuff said. So, my VFO board is attached to the inside of it's enclosure with four rather large globs of hot glue in each corner. This concept does have some merit...you can remove the VFO board by using a small jeweler scredriver and prying up the globs, and not have any unused drilled holes left over.
The remaining step is to attach the Main Board to the top of the VFO enclosure and the VFO is now totally enclosed in a RF-Tight box.
Two steps remain...well actually three. The first is to attach the lines to the various pots and connectors (TUNE, RIT, AF Level, Speaker/Headphones, RF OUT, VFO RF, +12vdc, KEY LINE). Second is mounts the pots, connectors, etc to something that will serve as a front panel...more to come on that in a later update. Finally and most important is set up a sked with NT7S for my first contact. Jason being the designer deserves the honor of being the first to work my rig and hopefully he will use his Willamette. Jason, my heartfelt thanks for one of the most enjoyable homebrew projects I have ever worked on. I hope there are many more to come!
The first items to be done was the cutting of the PCB material from an old large chunk sheet of PCB. It is quite amazing what a novice to this sort of work can do with a pair of tin snips and a dremel tool.
I should mention that the VFO must be in a RF-Tight enclosure to prevent stray RF from causing issues with the Main Board. This really provide for an excellant means of boxing up the Willamette as a showcase rig. There is nothing more satisifying than to be able to look at your work while using the rig. Looking at the three photo's above: the first is the large sheet of PCB I had on-hand to cut my pieces from. The next two photo's show one larger piece of PCB that was the same size as the Main Board. This piece serves as the bottom of the VFO enclosure with the Main Board will be used as the top of the enclosure. The four smaller pieces in the second picture are the four sides of the enclosure, of which one will serve as the front panel for the VFO control signals and VFO RF to exit from the enclosure.
Once the cutting and drilling was accomplished, I started assembling the VFO enclosure, as shown in the next set of photo's below:
The above left photo shows the box section of the enclosure with four stand-offs installed. These stand-offs hold the bottom and top (Main Board) together. An added benefit was that it made it much easier to get the four side pieces soldered into place. The right photo shows the completed VFO enclosure minus the top piece which is the Main Board. I layed a screw, stand-off and nut in the box to show how the stand-off was put together. The threaded end of the stand-off goes through one of the four corner holes in the bottom piece and a nut is attached. The top of the stand-off has a threaded hole in it...the Main Board also was drilled so I had matching four corner holes to put the nut through to attach the Main Board to top of the VFO enclosure. Before I could attached the Main Board, I had to install the VFO Board and wire up the control lines to the feed-thru caps and the RF signal to the BNC connector. Anymore these days, I tend to use a feed-thru cap for any control or RF signal that leaves a boxed enclosure. After building my W7ZOI spectrum analyzier, I found it is better to be safe than sorry when it comes to using or not using feed-thru caps!
OK, the enclosure is ready to have the VFO installed.
In the earlier days of my homebrewing Flying Pig projects, KB9BVN invented a miracle concept that allows for fast installation of circuit boards. Well, he actually uses this scheme for attaching most anything, including parts, pads, wiring, etc to a piece of copper clad board. Rumor has it that he once tossed a handful of parts into a brown paper bag, shot a large glob of hot glue into the bag, closed the top of the bag and shook the living daylights out of it. When he opened the bag and dumped out the contents, a state-of-the-art Multi-Pig Plus Tranceiver fell out in working condition. Remember what I said about its better to be safe than sorry....nuff said. So, my VFO board is attached to the inside of it's enclosure with four rather large globs of hot glue in each corner. This concept does have some merit...you can remove the VFO board by using a small jeweler scredriver and prying up the globs, and not have any unused drilled holes left over.
The remaining step is to attach the Main Board to the top of the VFO enclosure and the VFO is now totally enclosed in a RF-Tight box.
Two steps remain...well actually three. The first is to attach the lines to the various pots and connectors (TUNE, RIT, AF Level, Speaker/Headphones, RF OUT, VFO RF, +12vdc, KEY LINE). Second is mounts the pots, connectors, etc to something that will serve as a front panel...more to come on that in a later update. Finally and most important is set up a sked with NT7S for my first contact. Jason being the designer deserves the honor of being the first to work my rig and hopefully he will use his Willamette. Jason, my heartfelt thanks for one of the most enjoyable homebrew projects I have ever worked on. I hope there are many more to come!