Homebrew PCBs

Hi Alan,
The SKN transceiver is "A 30 meter transceiver for Straight Key Night"
 under the "Completed Projects" setion, 1st item listed. The direct
link would be http://www.kx4om.com/Projects/SKNXCVR/30mxcvr.html.

The site may have been in flux when you looked.  I did some
considerable re-writing of that page last night, changing the wording
from a project description in progress, so the html code was flying
back and forth from my laptop to the server, and the internal links
were changing.

My latest frustration with Eagle is pad design, or lack of it.  I'm
doing an RF amplifier circuit that has two MMICs in it for
preamplification prior to the PA.  Of course, there are no library
components for the Mini-Circuits MAR-6, or Agilent MSA-0386, etc,. so
I had to design them.  The problem is, the spec for the two opposing
ground pad sections (think 4-bladed ceiling fan; input, output, and 2
grounds)are horizontally wide, rounded edges, with 8 through-holes to
the bottom layer of the board, to distribute the capacitance to the
ground plane.  The best I could do for the Package was to lay down the
surface mount pads, and draw using the polygon tool on the outer 1/3
of the two ground pads.  Now, after adding the part to the schematic,
DRC on the board tells me I have a clearance problem between the
ground pads and the rectangular polygons!  Duh...they're suppost to be
connected, but as my questions from last week remain, Eagle expects
one and one only "pad" connected to each pin.  Nothing else must touch.

As I told a friend in an e-mail earlier today, that's why I export my
Eagle boards to Photoshop, so I can do anything I want to with them!

It's hard to imagine doing digital work without CAD, even at the DIL
page level.  I actually do have a manual wire-wrap tool and a spool of
wire, but I've never used it.  To tell you the truth, I'm not very
good at perf-boad soldered lead construction, either.  I have a couple
of basic problems: layout visualization (I keep running off the end of
the board), and bending those leads and running wiring in a sane
manner.  Doing "Ripup All" is so much easier!  I've done a little bit
of "ugly" construction, and that's a very fast way to buid, and I've
done a bit of Manhattan, which is kind of tedious to me.  Until I
recently got back into homebrewing the last couple of years, most of
my work involved drilling chassis and mounting tube sockets and
terminal strips.  That's quite a gap in time from working with 6146
beam power tetrodes to MMIC amplifiers the size of a piece of buckshot!

CUL,
Ted 

--- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, Alan Marconett <KM6VV@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Ted,
> 
> I haven't done any layouts for HF.  Last time, I think it was
probably a 
> tube circuit.  Ok, maybe some simple single side circuit laid out
with tape.
> 
> I went to your website, but couldn't find the SKN xcvr.
> 
> Although I did a few sample autoroutes on my board, I just "kept going" 
> after getting the the pwr routed.  Wasn't that hard!  The board was 
> fairly simple, 'tho.
> 
> And I came to appreciate why boards (digital anyway) are often routed 
> one direction on top, and a cross direction on the bottom.  It keeps
the 
> paths open, and minimizes vias.
> 
> Alan  KM6VV
---snip---