Kit building frenzy

The guy at my local Radio Shack is starting to recognize me.

RS Guy: “Hello, back for more stuff?”

Me: “Yep, back for more bits.”

After whetting my appetite for electronics (again) and soldering with the Morse code key and its breadboarded cousin, I’ve added a couple more kits to work on and practice my soldering with.

Both are small, simple breadboard power supply kits from Sparkfun. Haven’t started assembling them yet, but they’re pretty easy. The components and pieces are smaller though and it’s a much smaller board to work with. Now that I know a little more about soldering, they’ll be good projects for me to practice on. The kits will provide power for future breadboard projects I work on (provided I don’t cook anything in the process of soldering).

A tip from Andrew/AC8JO let me to the SDR radio kits at Five Dash. After a bit of consideration, I decided to get the Softrock RXTX and Softrock Lite II kits. Not sure what frequency band i’ll build them for, but I can decide that later.

I’ll need to gain a few more levels in soldering and pick up an SMT soldering subspecialty before I tackle the RXTX kit. The Softrock Lite II I think I can make with a little more soldering practice.