Years ago, a family member gifted me a simple medium-wave #radio assembly kit by the Franzis verlag, a German publisher specializing in technical books and #DIY kits ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franzis_Verlag ). After a cursory glance at the packaging, I decided that building it went beyond my (so far minimal) understanding of electrical #engineering. So it collected dust for quite a while.

But recently, I've grown more interested in teaching myself some #electronics skills. At the beginning of this week, I opened the box, skimmed the construction manual, and decided that I wanted to give it a try. A friend then gave me a quick #soldering introduction, and lent me his unused soldering station (a Yihua 853d). Last night, I followed the manual as best as I could in putting the radio together.

Barely grasping what I was doing, just trying to follow the letters of the manual, I probably made lots of mistakes. I managed to distribute some amount of solder onto parts of my furniture, where it now seems stuck forever as beautiful silvery decoration. I burned my little finger. But I also felt my dexterity grow quickly in handling the soldering iron. (The most frustrating part of the whole excercise was not actually the soldering, but stripping the insulation from the ends of the included wires, as I lacked the proper tool for that.)

In the early morning hours I got to the end of the manual, closed the box with all the soldered-together electronics in it, turned the thing on – and actually heard stuff. Mostly noise, lots of hissing – but I was happy that I heard any sound at all. After moving the radio away from the computer, and searching the frequencies a bit, I actually found some voices and music buried under the noise. My enthusiasm grew.

I probably won't use this device much. And my understanding of how it works is at best vague. (I've started reading "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz/Hill to grow my understanding of these topics, but am still stuck in the first few pages.) But I feel much less intimidated now by #electrical-engineering, and intend to do practice more in that direction :-) #learning-stuff

More info on this specific kit (which does not seem to be sold anymore officially, though there seem to be several successor kits): http://www.elektronik-labor.de/Lernpakete/Retro/MWretro3.html / http://www.elektronik-labor.de/Lernpakete/MWretro.html

That is a very nice-looking kit (esp. the package, looks skookum as frig)! And a good demonstration of how you can use a BJT to amplify current, but I'm gonna mostly comment on

The most frustrating part of the whole excercise[sic] was not actually the soldering, but stripping the insulation from the ends of the included wires, as I lacked the proper tool for that.

(emphasis mine)

And remark that, in all my <arbitrary number> years of handling electronics, I've never felt a need for such a tool:– all you need is a knife and a thumb (and practice) to strip every cable nice and clean, which also ties in to one of @IBob's points – you don't need any Extremely Skookum™ equipment, and for 80% of all purposes a chincy 15PLN 40W iron and first-off-the-shelf solder will do.

Anyway, great job on that radio and good luck on your forays into the JFM lands of electronics!

@IBob @nabijaczleweli thanks for the kind words and the recommendations. Let me remark on the soldering station that looks so high-tech and expensive: It probably does because it's also doing other things, has a hot air gun (actually broken in this instance), a power supply, a voltmeter … And can be had for around 100$. The lender speculated that it might mostly be used as a cheap "all you need to repair mobile phones" set for small shops specialized in that. As I didn't have to pay for lending it it and got it offered the minute I asked around for solder recommendations, it actually was my first, cheapest off-the-shelf option ;)

As for the cable stripping, well I guess my finger dexterity didn't grow quite as fast there as with the soldering … I somehow hardly ever found the sweet spot between "cutting the insulation" and "cutting what's insulated". Any tutorials on doing it properly with just the knife and the tumb would be greatly appreciated.

@IBob and great exercise idea re the unused cut-up wires BTW :-)

It might be because I explicitly keep the big blade of my offiziersmesser not Very Sharp but only Slightly Sharp, but all I need do is take the wire, emplace it upon my thumb, upon it emplace the knife, and then roll the wire around slightly (therefore making the blade run around the circumference), using only low-to-moderate force (the insulation is not a wundermaterial by any means (usually PVC, IIRC?)).
Thereafter it should be a matter of applying moderate-to-high force to pull it apart, or of repeating the process a two to three times a couple part-turns later.

That's how I do it but I've quite dexterious programmer fingers (and carpal tunnel, oh well), so it might be different in difficulty to pull off with full-size hand-work hands, but I hope this was quite helpful nonetheless.

Thanks @nabijaczleweli, I might try to keep this approach in mind next time I have to handle the situation :-)