Faultfinding Electronic Assemblies for Radio Amateurs – Roy M0WTP

Following on from our very first Construction Club in October where members assembled and tested their own Pixie 40m CW Tranceivers, our November meeting concentrated on the skill of fault-finding of electronic assemblies and components.

Roy M0WTP who runs our Construction Club was kind enough to host this meeting and give us all a presentation on fault-finding providing advice and techniques on identifying the most likely components to be the cause, the types of faults and the symptoms they might demonstrate. Roy also provided help with techniques for checking suspect components, solder joints and cleaning up circuit boards ready for replacement of a faulty part.

With 30 members in attendance this was our best attended meeting this year, confirming that the interest in Amateur Radio self-build and repair is still very much an important part of the hobby.

Following his presentation, Roy held a fault-finding ‘drop-in’ where together with other experienced members he located the cause of faults with some of the Pixie transceivers constructed last month, identifying and resolving most of them.

Thank you to Roy M0WTP and all that helped and joined us for our biggest meeting of the year. Our larger venue is getting some good use and allowing us to expand our activities.