One thing you might try "next time"...

Pre-tin the PC pads by heating them with a heat gun, (being careful to
not overheat the board) and applying a very small amount of solder to
each pad. If you can get the IC pins all lined up with their PC board
pads, tack solder one of the corner pins (or one that is easiest to
solder without bridging). Use a toothpick (or some other device) to
apply gentle down pressure to the IC to keep it from moving. Use the
heat gun again (carefully) until the solder melts and the chip should
"settle" down into the molten solder. Keep the heat gun moving around
all pins to be sure all get down into molten solder. If you happen to
have a piece of copper clad PC board, you can practice by putting some
solder blobs on it and putting the leads of some sort of junkbox parts
on to the solder and heat it up with the heat gun, apply the down
pressure to the component and you can get the feel of how far the heat
gun should be away from the board and the length of time it takes to
melt the solder...

Scott
N0EDV

ken scharf wrote:
I bought one of these kits to make use of a sample AD9851 chip I got
from Analog Devices a few years ago.

http://www.amqrp.org/kits/dds60/index.html

I knew it was hopeless to bread board something with this chip, but even
with a PC board soldering something with such close lead spacing is a
challenge (especially when you're past 50 with failing close in vision
and less than rock solid stable hands). Still I figured I'd give it a
try. Armed with the smallest soldering tip available for my Weller
PES51 soldering station, a good magnifier lamp AND a binocular
microscope I gave it a try to solder the chip to the board.

Well there is good news and bad news. The bad news is that it is
impossible to solder the chip by hand without creating solder bridges.
The good news is that I did a good enough job to get the chip 99%
perfectly centered on the solder pads, and you can remove the solder
bridges with solder wick without removing the chip from the PC board.

It would have been easier with thiner solder (I had .021" dia solder)
and a thiner soldering iron tip, but inspection with the microscope
shows no shorts, and it looks like all the pins are properly soldered.
Naked eye it doesn't look pretty but it should work.

Now to solder those chip caps and resistors! (They should be easier,
the AD9851 was the worst part to place with the tight spacing, all the
other parts have lead spacing at least twice as wide).