[hpsdr] Atlas, How do I hand solder this thing?

[Thompson_Peter at emc.com]

Thanks for the advice, Bill.

Your description of the soldering iron technique suggests using thin wire
solder; I do like the idea of placing a small piece of wire next to one end
of the component, leaving hands free to position and hold and apply heat -
although a third hand would probably come in handy :)  Is it possible to use
solder paste with a soldering iron - maybe there's no advantage to doing
this?

Pete, N3EVL 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bill Tracey [mailto:bill at ewjt.com] 
> Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 7:41 AM
> To: Thompson, Peter; bill at ewjt.com; merickse at tampabay.rr.com; 
> hpsdr at hpsdr.org
> Subject: RE: [hpsdr] Atlas, How do I hand solder this thing?
> 
> I've never used  pre-warming on the hot air gun work I've 
> done.  I generally  don't try and do an entire board in one 
> shot (unless it is small like a soft rock)  - gun seems 
> capable of heating a section at a time and 
> reflowing the solder effectively.   I only use the hot air 
> technique on 
> surface mount parts - any through hole stuff gets done by 
> hand after the SMT parts are done.
> 
> I'd definitely practice on something it little less scarce 
> than an Atlas before trying a hot air gun on it.  Actually if 
> you have any old obsolete PC cards you can hot air gun some 
> parts off it to get a feel for how much heat it takes to flow 
> the solder - and put them back to get a feel for the 
> technique.   For removal I  heat the components of interest until the 
> solder flows and knudge the part off with a toothpick.
> 
> Regards,
> 

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