​Thanks to all your suggestions I made two trial orders:

pcbway.com

jlcpcb.com


About last friday night/saturday.

The first set is supposed to arrive sometime tomorrow (wednesday)

and the other set on Thursday. amazing.


Fingers crossed that I did this correctly!!!


Showed this project to my youngest son (working as a new auto mechanic) and he was motivated to get out the christmas arduino kit I gave him and immediately started building LED circuits....astonishing my wife and me....may help him out in life.




________________________________
From: BITX20@groups.io <BITX20@groups.io> on behalf of Gordon Gibby <ggibby@...>
Sent: Sunday, January 21, 2018 12:09 AM
To: BITX20@groups.io
Subject: Re: [BITX20] Creating Gerber files for pcb construction


Thanks for yet another great suggestion.


I have now created a "flying jumpers" breadboard version using a couple of different resistive bridge designs --- the K6BEZ design driven by the Si5351 directly didn't produce enough voltage to make the reverse measurement accurate and I gave up after several hours on that. Would need to add an amplification stage I believe... The easy swr indicator kit from http://www.qrpkits.com/ezseries.html#ezswr<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.qrpkits.com_ezseries.html-23ezswr&d=DwMFAw&c=pZJPUDQ3SB9JplYbifm4nt2lEVG5pWx2KikqINpWlZM&r=3ELgZgmTnPzGsfvQxkd1S_2NGLYM8sHTxVCQKFxhVXQ&m=McWMTsaWY88BIHjI9RhDX8BXq0BroHl6MaH6P7zGTVo&s=iOg3ff6bkbrqV9BQbMsupWJHkEUhFqFcHTVOepLM0YM&e=> (no LED, just take the rectified voltage and run into an op amp with a gain of about 6) produced a voltage that seemed to work. My circuit is sorta haywire (with egloo jumpers everywhere) and the pcb version would be FAR MORE STABLE but I'm able to measure shorts, 25 ohm, 50 ohm, 100 ohm, 220 ohm and open circuit and get "sorta close SWR" measurements at frequencies up to maybe 30 MHz. There is so much haywiredness to the breadboard that I can't make any better observations at the moment. The PCB should be a ton more mechanically stable. Earlier today I put it on a real antenna and it did find the resonance.


A friend is working on the "single meter" SWR version using a toroidial swr measurement head (which I also have built and should also work). The goal there is to emulate the $129 LDG big meter display of SWR..... The pcb that I cranked out (and now being built in China, fingers crossed!) should work with both. (2 different inputs).


You folks are a lot brighter at this stuff than I am but it has been a ton of fun just getting this much to work! I think this is going to be a great building project for our ARES group.






________________________________
From: BITX20@groups.io <BITX20@groups.io> on behalf of William R Maxwell <wrmaxwell@...>
Sent: Saturday, January 20, 2018 5:02 PM
To: BITX20@groups.io
Subject: Re: [BITX20] Creating Gerber files for pcb construction


Another to consider is www.jlcpcb.com<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.jlcpcb.com&d=DwMF-g&c=pZJPUDQ3SB9JplYbifm4nt2lEVG5pWx2KikqINpWlZM&r=3ELgZgmTnPzGsfvQxkd1S_2NGLYM8sHTxVCQKFxhVXQ&m=IdE0tYxjCfc0L_NPXEC5rll-igwhgt6ppqTzraUYlNc&s=WtrSAHHYrh1yu_YDRixyHaUjQzv0a3Hp9-zY2b8fanM&e=>. I have just received 10 boards for a mere $2 total, including DHL shipping. Note the there is a sixe limit of 100mmx100mm, and two layers, green solder resist and 1.6mm material.

This offer I think is limited to your initial order. A subsequent set of 3 boards, 10 copies each, cost me $29, including shipping.

Bill, VK7MX

On 21/01/2018 12:38 AM, Gordon Gibby wrote:
Wow!!! Thank you for that wonderful tip.

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 20, 2018, at 06:51, Kerr Smith <kerrsmithusa@...<mailto:kerrsmithusa@...>> wrote:

Have you looked at PCB Shopper? You just set the size of your PCB and how any boards you require and it will list all the main PCB fabrication sites and how much it will cost:

https://pcbshopper.com<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__pcbshopper.com&d=DwMFaQ&c=pZJPUDQ3SB9JplYbifm4nt2lEVG5pWx2KikqINpWlZM&r=3ELgZgmTnPzGsfvQxkd1S_2NGLYM8sHTxVCQKFxhVXQ&m=tVwyxBAPRZNQpdExa-g1tsq8okRaE7YCQUjWUUW6hMg&s=x1CZZZOSFNIXEjRrVRTlehkNhcaChUif1k7nsMKwx4Q&e=>

For my latest PCBs I tried AllPCB and was extremely pleased with the results, they had an offer on at the time so for $5 I got 7 boards on one order and for my second $5 order I got 17 boards (if your boards are small they seem to add in extra to your order) - they were all shipped using TNT and arrived in just 5 days. At the current time the total cost is $12 for 5 boards up to 35mm x 35mm with free TNT shipping:

http://www.allpcb.com<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.allpcb.com_setinvite.aspx-3Finviteid-3D30276-26url-3Dhttp-3A__www.allpcb.com_online-5Fquote.html&d=DwMFaQ&c=pZJPUDQ3SB9JplYbifm4nt2lEVG5pWx2KikqINpWlZM&r=3ELgZgmTnPzGsfvQxkd1S_2NGLYM8sHTxVCQKFxhVXQ&m=tVwyxBAPRZNQpdExa-g1tsq8okRaE7YCQUjWUUW6hMg&s=VRALDmdsziyoxueeKz6mXPEvcc6DHC3hcVq_mlvqGIo&e=>

The other site I would recommend is OSHPark:

https://oshpark.com<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__oshpark.com_&d=DwMFaQ&c=pZJPUDQ3SB9JplYbifm4nt2lEVG5pWx2KikqINpWlZM&r=3ELgZgmTnPzGsfvQxkd1S_2NGLYM8sHTxVCQKFxhVXQ&m=tVwyxBAPRZNQpdExa-g1tsq8okRaE7YCQUjWUUW6hMg&s=dqHZt9-lgSwySoNuMqvHedfU_5GT-Uu8usvQgbFEknc&e=>

They are the ones who do the purple PCBs which look really great and also pretty cheap, only a few dollars (around $9.50) for three 35mm x 35mm boards with shipping included.

I am so pleased that the price for creating PCBs yourself is now this low, up until now I have been carefully making my own by etching them but now I can get them in a few days if I need them fast or a couple of weeks if I don't mind waiting. There are so many different fabrication sites there is always going to be a great deal to be had if you shop around a bit, the PCB Shopper site I mentioned above is really great for this.