There's a bit of a back story to this .
It starts with a search of China bay , Evil bay, the Amazombies and various other purveyors of cupric clad fiberglass. The issue is/was I needed 93 mil board . That is .093" . Why ? Because that is the offset of the leads coming out of the MRF101AN.
Now getting some, any seller, to admit that their board even has thickness let alone posting it in a searchable format without having to examine each individual page for the fine print was like finding an honest politician.
Two hours later I found a Amazon seller. Good news was it was a painless purchase and quick shipping.
Now the search for the 3/8" OD thin wall copper tubing. Now it's either copper tubing or copper pipe and most of , if not all of the China bay , Evil bay, the Amazombies and various other purveyors of cupric tubular nonsense treat the two terms as interchangeable. First most pipe has too thick a wall and you have to search by 1/4" ID (.250) to get 3/8" OD. What you find eventually is a mix of 1/4" OD and 3/8" OD with varying wall thickness in coiled form. Then what is usually the go to for small projects , K & S metals doesn't have anything over 1/4" OD. Finally https://www.grainger.com/product/MUELLER-INDUSTRIES-2-ft-Hard-Straight-Copper-4WTG9 .375-.06 does not = .250 , .250 + .06 does not equal .375. So what kind of math comes up with a .030" wall thickness ?
All I want is 2' of 3/8" .030" wall thickness copper tube. At less than $2.50 will call why not try? It worked because the wall thickness was .030" and all was right in the world.
I have three sets of cores on the way from Amidon . All are 1.12" long, .375" ID and .687 OD. This "should be" enough mass to deal with 1:4 SSB duty cycle and reduced carrier AM or FM. I ordered the cores in 31, 43, and 61. For the input I'm going to try a binocular core of 43 or one of several cores I have from an old 300 ohm twin lead to 75 ohm coax balun.
Then there is the temperature/drive sensing bias circuit . I don't have the real estate to reproduce the circuit from the MFFX1K80H board but with some judicious shrinkage I should be able to get it down to large postage stamp size.
If I get one board work it's then cleaning up the sins and building a mask for the first few. Then it's off to the international purveyors of printed circuit confusion for any further. I just don't like keeping ferric chloride around.
Next will be more PC board tetris followed by solder and smoke.
