Basil B. wrote:

Hello all

I've been doing a fair bit of internet reading about RF construction
projects. I'm still confused about something.

Most authors, including those in the ARRL Handbook, seem to espouse
"ugly construction" and a variant called Manhatten construction. I
understand that the reason is that these techniques minimize
capacitance by providing a large ground plane. Ugly construction seems
to also encompass perfboard construction with wire traces or direct
component-to-component connections. This seems to me to be not much
better than using pre-printed boards whose traces match, in geometry,
those of solderless prototyping boards.

I do understand that the solderless boards are inadequate for RF work,
but are the pre-printed perforated "protoboards" also inadequate.

Call it an OC tendency, but ugly construction is, well, ugly. Of
course, I want to use the best techniques for what I'm doing, and if UC
is the way to go, then that's what I'll do.

I'd appreciate your opinions on this.

Thanks
Basil B.

I think the primary reason that folks espouse ugly construction is that
it may look bad to us, but the electrons like it just fine. It can be
tough to get over the aesthetics (or lack thereof) of your fine new
circuit, but it'll work just as well and it'll be less work than using a
PC board.

You can, of course, make a PC board. Unless you know _exactly_ what
you're doing you'll end up making mistakes, which will require changes,
which you won't get right the first time. So if you have your new,
flawed, PC board you'll modify it, and the mods will be, well, ugly.

So if you're going to make something ugly anyway, why not make it ugly
to start? Once it works right then you can make a nice pretty PC if you
feel like it.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com