Radio Products
Useful radio products for project building
You can “get by” in PC-board kit assembly with a few basic radio products, like a soldering iron, solder, and a small pair of diagonal cutters (OR “wire nippers”), but you’ll find yourself wishing for needle-nose pliers with every other move you make! Also important is a sponge, or steel wool or damp rag for keeping the tip of the soldering iron clean and shiny.
There are a variety of convenience radio products and accessories for electronics building such as soldering aids, mini-vices, tweezers, or magnifiers.
Radio Products
Choosing a soldering iron is like choosing a tennis racquet or fishing rod. You want the level of heat and the style of tip that helps you to accomplish the one goal of soldering, a perfect connection!
Screwdrivers, pliers, nut-drivers, wire-strippers and other common tools become needed only at the stage of working with enclosures or making connections to Mini-Kit PC-boards. If your radio products require adjustment of a coil, a non-metallic alignment tool will be needed.
Identifying your radio products
RESISTORS:
The universal color coding of resistors does not change, fortunately, but resistor body colors and the style of wire leads can vary. Install any resistor as shown on the PC board parts layout diagram.
CERAMIC DISC CAPACITORS:
It is helpful practice to become familiar with the various marking codes for ceramic capacitors and all radio products.
While capacitors also can be color-coded, some Kits use disc capacitors marked by a number-letter code. The first two digits establish the first two numbers of the value. The third digit is the multiplier.
Values under 100 Pico farads, used widely in FM and VHF kits, and are printed clearly with no need to interpret them further. Small capacitors stamped 4.7, 10, 15, 33, 68 and so forth are 4.7, 10, 15, 33, 68 Pico farads respectively! A 100 Pico farad capacitor, also commonly used in kits, can be marked either 100 or 101! If it’s marked 100, believe it. If it is marked 101, the value is 10 (first 2 digits) X 10 (3rd digit multiplier) = 100 Pico farads! If it is marked 101J, we know that it is made to 5% accuracy, while H signifies 3% and K is 10%.
Rule of thumb: If the 3rd digit is a 0, you may assume the value is in Pico farads, and you can take the three numbers together as the Pico farad value for that capacitor. So, just as in the above example, both “470″ and “471″ are 470 pf. There is a growing trend to mark capacitors very clearly in Nan farads. Be sure not to confuse 10nf or 100nf with 10 or 100 Pico farads.
Radio Products
ELECTROLYTIC CAPACITORS:
Virtually every kit uses one or more electrolytic capacitors. These are polarized capacitors, which mean that they have positive (+) and negative (-) leads and MUST be installed correctly on the PC board. The positive (+) side is generally etched on the PC-board itself. Ordinarily, only the negative side is marked on the capacitor.
INDUCTORS:
Coils or inductors can come to you in ANY of these styles: Unshielded, slug-tuned Shielded, slug-tuned Enamelled wire and easy do-it-yourself winding directions Color-coded coil similar in appearance to a resistor
DIODES:
Be sure to understand the difference between the cathode (banded) end and the anode before installing. If the kit uses several different diodes, it is necessary to identify each of them correctly. There ARE printed markings on even tiny diodes. You’ll need a magnifying glass even if you claim perfect 20-20 eyes!
An LED (light-emitting diode) is indeed a diode, not a lamp. A numeric display such as used in frequency counters or tone decoders is a series of LED’s.
TRANSISTORS:
The most common single transistor for most kits is the versatile NPN 2N3904.
INTEGRATED CIRCUITS (“IC’s”):
Many kits employ at least one IC. Be very careful in setting IC’s into sockets.
Radio products
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