[R-390] Now *this* is a really nifty idea...

[Tisha Hayes]

Have you noticed that over the years that making a good soldering joint
seems to get harder to do? With the introduction of non-lead based solders
and the removal of good 'ol rosin I find that there are just some times
where I cannot get a connection to wet properly. Also the finish is not as
shiny and smooth as they used to be.

Gone are the days when the standard accessory on my desk was a Weller
soldering/ desoldering station, a squirt bottle of rosin and a sponge that
needed a drink of water every morning. My office used to have more of a
touch of engineer with the air pressure regulator mounted high along the
back wall to provide the desoldering station with air. Nowadays it is rolls
and rolls of blueprints and piles of project specifications. How the mighty
have fallen! (smile).

I imagine that quite a few of the folks on the list take a great deal of
pride for being able to follow your progress through a radio by looking at
all of the new, shiny soldering joints in place of what the factory put in
50 years ago.

Excellent soldering skills are definitely on the decline. Every year when a
newly minted EE shows up on the doorstep I am more and more astonished by
their lack of skill to perform basic tasks like soldering.

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I have a funny short tale to relate to the group about a new, Pimply Faced
Youth, electrical engineer;
I took a PFY-EE out with me to a customer location where we were having a
problem with drop-outs and low BER on a microwave system. I decided that the
dish needed some slight alignment changes. The 10' dish was mounted on the
roof of a 30 story building. (this is a 48 dB gain antenna). I instructed
him to stay away from the front of the antenna, we had a pair of
handi-talkies to discuss what adjustments to make from the back of the dish
for azimuth and tilt.
As you know, making adjustments to antenna alignment you frequently need to
give a system a few minutes to settle in to measure data throughput on a
link. This can take a few hours to get the alignment right on.
All was well and we were at the point of making fractional adjustments to
the antenna (I was down at the receiver, watching statistics, RSL, SNR, BER
and data rates). Suddenly in the middle of a measurement cycle, performance
would drop into the toilet for 20-30 seconds at a time. Now we were chasing
our tails and trying to figure out what had changed, and what is so
intermittent. After an hour of this I went up to the roof to find out what
was going on.
I found my PFY-EE standing on the edge of the roof, admiring the view,
directly in front of the microwave antenna.
I have no idea if he noticed any effects from essentially sticking his head
in a microwave oven. It just reminded me how clueless and dangerous a newly
minted engineer is.
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