[Elecraft] OT-NASA soldering

[Jeremiah McCarthy]

Judging from a direct response, it seems that my statement about using minimum solder to save lift-off weight during the lunar lander program generated skepticism...At that time NASA estimated that they saved 450 pounds on the entire Saturn 5 launch vehicle by limiting the amount of solder used for a "one-shot" launch...NASA did not use Mil-Spec, they had their own spec...

Jerry, wa2dkg

>>Anything that is built for NASA and will fly will most likely have to be conformal coated...Leaving excess lead length might cause the ends to protrude out of the conformal coating, defeating the purpose of the coating...I was not aware of any min-max lead length protrusion in my dealings with NASA....We used minimum solder to save lift-off weight and we always trimmed flush...<<