On 30 Dec 2005 09:32:25 -0800, "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've done carfully constructed dead bug (ugly) RF hardware that works
well at 2.4ghz and is not ugly It's a very effective techniques and
with modest care it's difficult to do better with etched circuits at
VHF or higher.

Some of my best radios and test gear have been built this way
and some test items are now several decades old. It can be very
rugged as well.

Allison
KB!gmx