The club held a soldering project class for those that wanted to venture into project building fun. Soldering projects provide great fun and a sense of enjoyment and accomplishment but can also be intimidating to those that have never held the cool end of an iron before.
Saturday March 28th 2026 was a chance to get over the intimidation and find out how fulfilling building a simply soldering project can be. A FM radio receiver kit was chosen as the project for the day. A simple yet detailed build that not only teaches soldering skills but also the basics of electronics as circuit testing and troubleshooting is outlined along the way as the build progresses in the manual.
Brian, NG2S, prebuilt his kit to see if there were any point of interest or pitfalls we needed to watch out for. There were a few point of interest that were brought to the attention of the builders before they started the process that made things a bit easier. Things like a 9v battery not being supplied in the kit and not being noted would have put a damper on any completed projects as we would not have had the final piece to hear the final product actually work and that is where the sense of pride and accomplishment comes from. What a let down that would have been to go through 90 minutes plus of building to not have that final piece to see if it actually works.
John, W4JDM, ran into an issue with solder but worked through it and while learning about soldering himself he was cordial enough to allow Ed, KR4JBL, to sit in and try some soldering himself on Jon’s project board. Jon cam close to finishing the project but ran short on time because he had to make some repairs to his pcb but that’s how it goes sometimes during the learning process. That is how we learn.
Mike, NZ4K, was able to finish hos project in a little over 90 minutes. It seems Mike is a soldering pro with his magnifying binocular headgear he brought. I guess he thought we would be working on some micro sized surface mount components for our first kit. I guess it is better to be prepared for the worst case scenario, you never know! HAHA.
In any event we all had a great time. I had fun giving pointers to those that were building. I had fun building my kit even though I did it before the class. I have to question though, how many of these FM receiver radios does one need? LOL. I’ll keep building them as long as guys want to learn how to solder as I enjoy teaching others. Some skills were learned and fun was had. What more could you ask for at an event like this? That is what it is all about! I am sure there will be more in the future. The next project might be building your very own W.O.P.R.! A little more complicated but fun I am sure. LOL
