19 Apr
2011
19 Apr
'11
8:26 a.m.
Young or old, I've seen some guys who just can't hold a soldering iron
with shaking like a leaf! But then, you could always get a hot air
rework station for around $100 with a fine tip, dab a dot a solder on
one side of a pad, hold the part in place and hold the hot air tip over
it to set it, then go to the other pin(s) and with some solder, run the
hot air tip near it and be done.... If you're really not up for that,
you can get small desktop reflows for $395 and just order a solder paste
mask and a squeeqee and just apply some solder paste, plop down the
parts and slide the board into your high tech easy-bake oven ;-)
C Sullivan / A Baumann wrote:
On Apr 18, 2011, at 11:05 PM, Rod Smallwood wrote:
I use Morse on a daily basis and am completely
self taught (over 50years
ago). I don't think it?s an "I can/can't do it situation." Learning it
is
another matter. If you can't pick it up yourself then find somebody
qualified to teach you.
That's not universally true. I struggled with Morse code, and never got much better
than a sloppy 5 WPM. And, it's not a matter of "somebody to teach": one of
my elmers was Gordon West WB6NOA himself (I'm originally from Southern California, and
was a member of a radio club that had Gordon as a member for a while).
We had this exact same argument with SMD soldering a few months back. Some people just
can't do it for whatever reason, and it's not always because they lack desire or a
teacher. Some skills are just simply out of some people's reach. And that's OK:
I'm sure some of the skills I have are out of other's reach. It's part of
being human. We all have different abilities and maximum levels of achievement.
The irony: I can hear and decode touch tones at the maximum key pulse speed with the same
accuracy as most telephone switches. I can also "play by ear" after only
hearing a musical piece one or two times. I would never tell somebody else that struggled
with either musical skill that "if I can do it, anybody can." It's
insulting not only to them, but to myself and my musical "talent."