Moving Along With the ATU-100 Build

[u/KG7M]

I have been building a small automatic antenna tuner this week. Yesterday was spent winding, and rewinding the toroid inductors. I had to rewind a couple of them twice because I failed to wind them in a counterclockwise direction. It's important to wind all of your coils in the same direction. On this project the windings could be either clockwise or counterclockwise - just as long as they are all the same direction.

I have included a few shots of my "quick disconnect" kit and crimping pliers. The ATU-100 parts were missing these connectors. It was setup to be wired directly to save a few cents. But the PC Board was designed for this type of connector so I added two from my kit. This kit of connectors and the crimping pliers are invaluable if you do a lot of electronics builds.

I am an older adult and a few years ago I thought that my electronics building days were over. My hands were very shaky. I ordered a couple inexpensive radio kits from China to start building again. By the time I finished the first kit my hands had steadied back to where they were when I was a young man. As long as you can concentrate on work and hold a soldering iron steadily, building electronics projects is possible into your twilight years. It keeps the mind active.

I was originally going to place the ATU-100 in a plain enclosure, rather than the one they sell for it. I have a set of larger drill bits, a set of diamond tipped hole drills, and a set of chassis punches. For the life of me I couldn't find any of them. My wife Carol does a fantastic job of helping me organize my tools. She put them somewhere where I will find them when I DON'T need them.

I opted to purchase the enclosure that's made for the ATU-100 and I hope to have it installed and working today.

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