Its kind of scary: my BITX 20/40 is starting to look vaguely appliance-like! Once again I find myself missing having the rig exposed -- sans-cabinet -- on the bench. For me, the contacts made under those conditions, with solder smoke still in the air, are the most satisfying and memorable.
But anyway, it is in the box now. I think it looks pretty good. I enjoyed working with the copper foil. I did some trial and error testing and found that ordinary Krazy Glue is the best adhesive for joining the plastic material on the back of the foil to the wood of the box. I like the look of the foil -- it reminds me of the copper (or gold?) foil covering that they put on some spacecraft.
There is always the danger that a rig that works well on the bench will go into rebellious oscillation when confined to a metallic box. That didn't happen with mine.
We discovered that the wood in the box is not actually walnut. But I'm not complaining because whatever it is, it is very easy to work with. BITX or Minima builders should consider these boxes (available via Amazon).
Our book: "SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics" http://soldersmoke.com/book.htm Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmoke Our Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20
First, there was the embrace of the little black boxes & millions of transistors. Now? Enclosures worthy of QEX publication. Where did the old Bill go?
ReplyDelete