[Boatanchors] Flux-Pen, sometimes the best tool on my bench

[Phil]

Hi All,

Hi, I posted the following to the Zenith TransOceanic group as that's 
the radio I'm presently working on.  But it's just as applicable (maybe 
more-so) to working on Boatanchors.

*******************************

Right now I'm in the process of overhauling a Zenith Royal 7000 
Transoceanic for a friend.  I've done some of them in the past, so I'm 
well familiar with them.

The 'Big two' capacitors were pretty much a piece of cake.  Snip the 
capacitor out, clean off the terminal posts and install the new ones, 
which incidentally are MUCH smaller in size.  I buy Radial Lead 'Lytic 
caps in bulk, which is ideal for connecting to the solder lugs, even 
though the originals are axial lead devices.

NOTE:  I've also bought large assortments of "Poly" Caps, Ceramic Disks 
etc in bulk, MUCH cheaper than onesies and twosies, and I have them when 
I need them.

So far so good. Then I got to a couple where I snipped the lead off the 
capacitor, leaving enough lead to do a nice neat "hook" connection with 
the original leads.  I REFUSE to try to remove the original leads from 
those hollow Solder lug things (like small hollow tubes) that Zenith 
used to group a bunch of connections together.  The likelihood of heat 
damaging something is too great.

To make the "hook connections" I gently scraped the original wire and 
tried to tin it.  It just didn't want to "tin" nicely, and I want nice, 
clean professional looking solder joints (I take pride in them).

*************************************

THEN, I thought of the Solder Flux pens I bought when I was building my 
Softrock SDR receiver.  It has a lot of small surface mount IC's etc and 
I wanted to be SURE everything got soldered up nicely, or cleaned up if 
I needed to solder wick some connections (I find the flux on solder wick 
is sometimes dried out and not completely effective, I first coat it 
with the 'pen', works VERY well).  When I ordered the Softrock, I also 
ordered two of the Flux-Pens (MG Chemicals Rosin Flux Pen Cat. No. 
835-P) from Amazon.  There are a LOT of different kinds on the market, 
MG Chemicals is a reputable company.  Two turned out to be way overkill, 
I'm still on the first one, the other package unopened.

So I first gently scraped the wire, then used the Flux-Pen and coated 
the wire, waited a few moments and then tinned it.  It did an absolutely 
WONDERFUL job!  The solder connections look really good.

*************************************

The beauty of the Flux Pen is it doesn't leave a lot of residue, doesn't 
run all over the place and isn't nearly as messy as trying to use a 
small bottle of Rosin Flux!  I have found it useful in a number of 
projects, it really makes a difference.


-- 
73 From "The Beaconeer's Lair"
Phil, KO6BB
http://www.qsl.net/ko6bb/  (Web Page)

HF/LF RADIOS:
Grundigs: S-350 (~2006), G6 (2011) & S450DLX (2014).
HOMEBREW: 7 Tube+Rect 1v3 Regenerative RX for LF (built 2015)
Icom:     IC-735 Transceiver (~1990).
Icom:     R-75, Cascaded 250/125Hz CW-Filt, Panadapter. (~2009)
Icom:     IC-7200 Transceiver (~2015).
R-Shack:  DX-380 digital portable (~1990).
SDR:      Softrock Ensemble II LF (built from a kit 2015).
Zenith:   Royal-7000 Transoceanic Portable (~1968).

ACC:   HOMEBREW  LF-MF Pre-Amp, MFJ-993B HF Auto-Tuner.
        HOMEBREW  4 Port Multicoupler, Feeds Antenna to 4 RX's.
        HOMEBREW  8 Hz Audio Filter.
        Timewave  DSP-599zx Audio Filter.
        Behringer 1202fx Audio Mixer (for mixing/routing audio).

ANTENNAS: 88 foot Long Ladder-line fed dipole, 35 feet AGL for MW/SW.
           Active Mini-Whip, 36 Feet AGL for LF/MW/SW.
           37 foot "Low Noise Vertical", 11 feet AGL for LF/MW/SW.

Merced, Central California, 37, 18, 37N   120, 30, 6W CM97rh