This picture is from the American Qrp Club site
Elsie is a kit offered by the American QRP Club and is built using what is known as "Manhattan style". I haven't been active in ham radio for several years and this style of construction was new to me. It is a take off of the "dead bug" style where you use point-to-point wiring without using a printed circuit board. Manhattan construction is much neater looking but getting started is a bit of a challenge. I found a couple of sites on the Internet that provided some hints on how to mount the ICs but they seemed too complicated, so I set out to see if I could find an easier way. I was looking through my junk box and came across this proto board from Radio Shack.
Radio Shack Proto Board
I took the board to my wood working band saw and cut enough board to mount the IC socket. Even though the band saw blade had very fine teeth, I still had to clean up the edges with a small file. This is what I came up with.
Pad for IC socket
I mounted the IC socket to the pad, and took this picture. I was disappoined with this picture because it made the solder job look bad but in reality it looks pretty good.
IC socket mounted on the pad
Here are a couple of shots of the board after the voltage regulatorcircuit was mounted.
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Board with regulator parts mounted
This shot shows the IC socket and crystal mounted on the board.
IC socket, crystal and voltage regulator
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I am still waiting for the digital readout and frequency counter parts to come in so you will see some empty space on the finished board below. I was happy when I applied power and heard this. I plan on doing other projects using this style of construction and the next time I hope my layout will improve.
Almost finished Elsie!