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| Boards completed. Plenty of room for easy assembly |
UPDATE: The TR-35 is reviewed in the December 2022 issue of QST.
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I've only had the Penntek TR-35 exactly one week, but during that time I've:
- built the kit
- activated a park
- made a fair showing in the ARRL DX Contest
and had many ragchews (and park huntings) on all four bands. I've also made selectivity, spectrum and MDS measurements.
Be forewarned - the following may sound like an advertisement, but it is not. I paid full price for the kit and have had no other communication with the kit's designer, John WA3RNC.
Now that that's out of the way, here is a fleshing-out of the notes I took during the week.
The Build
In 40 years of building kits, I've never seen one that is designed to prevent potential problems to the extent of the TR-35.
First off, the kit arrives about 70% pre-built and pre-aligned. Numerous SMD components are already installed and even the tedium of parts inventory has been rendered as mostly unnecessary due to how the parts are packaged. They come in three sleeves - one for each of two boards, plus the final assembly components (knobs, jacks, plugs, etc).
Within each sleeve, the components for each assembly step are each in their individual pocket. There are anywhere from 1 to 5 components per pocket.
