From: "Gerry" 
Subject: [drakelist] Drake synthesizer update.


"Gerry"  made an utterence to the
drakelist gang
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I ordered two kits from Far Circuits which arrived this week. One is for my
SPR-4 and the other will be used with one of my R-4C or R-4B. I'm sorry to
report that the quality of the boards is very poor, to say the least. Both
boards I ordered have only about 10% of the silk screen showing. What shows
is barely legible. Of course, I can use the board layout as published by the
ARRL but a silk screen was supposed to be on the boards. In addition, many
of the through holes are not fully radiused (is that a word?) with copper.
In other words, where the hole should be fully surrounded with copper, it
isn't. Only about 30% of some of the holes are what I would call acceptable.
I would say most holes aren't even centered properly on the copper even
though properly spaced which probably explains the lack of radius. Other
defects are spots of copper not fully plated while other spots show copper
not fully etched but plated just the same. One board was cut short of the
outlined dimensions. As long as I have the boards already, I will use them
and work around the lack of quality control. I regularly design PCB's as
part of my job in prototyping new IC products. Since everything is surface
mount these days, you can't just grab a piece of Vertorboard and go with it.
Some of the new IC's coming out have only about 5 mils of space between
leads so to breadboard a circuit, you have to have a good board layout to
start. $16.00 for the FAR Circuits board is very inexpensive. As a
comparison, we regularly spend a minimum of $35.00 per board for a small
double-sided and as much as $250.00 a board for a 6 layer (with testing) for
prototype quantities. Unfortunately in my opinion, these FAR Circuits boards
aren't even worth $16.00, and constitute some of the worst quality I have
seen in years. As if that weren't enough, the "kit" is not what was
mentioned in the QST article. For two kits I expected two PCB's, two PIC's,
two MCL VFO's, and four 7805's. I got the PIC's and VFO's all right but no
7805's that I can tell. There is a 61L76 which appears to be equivalent and
also a 29M62 which is not. I verified them both in the lab to make sure of
what I had. I have 7805's so that's not a show stopper. Both PIC's are
labeled SP4. Wonder if they're both the same? How can I tell the difference
before starting assembly? I will have to have one of my friends who has a
PIC programmer look at the contents to see just what they are. Since he
lives about 30 miles away, I will have to wait until he makes a trip this
way in a couple of weeks. Maybe the PIC's are both the same. It could be
also that they're both empty. It's happened before with other vendors and
from what I've seen of FAR Circuits, I wouldn't trust them. For some reason,
there were two 10mHz crystals (oh, ... a surprise) and a pair of 74AS7??
(golllly!!! 'nuther surprise) which appear to be re-stamped with 74 on the
last two digits. I assume they're 7474 equivalents. Originally I got the
kits to save time but as you can tell, that was wasted effort considering
what I got. One good thing I noticed is that the actual board is smaller
than what I assumed. From the ARRL files, I determined board dimensions to
be 9 1/4 x 3 7/8 inches when the actual dimensions are 7 1/2 x 3 1/4. This
is good because I have a couple of nicer enclosures than the ones I was
planning to use originally. Fortunately I work in the business and have
access to resources and have knowledge that a hobbyist might not have. I
will persevere and eventually succeed. Otherwise, I would be dead in the
water on this project.




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On Behalf of "Gerry" 
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