Yesterday I got the Clackamas all dressed up nicely in its new Ten-Tec TPC-41 enclosure. I have such a stack of bare, half-finished circuit boards laying in the shack that it’s always a real pleasure to get a project to the point where it’s well enough developed to put it in a case. It’s also much nicer to operate the rig when you don’t have to fumble around with holding a pot or switch in one hand while trying to work the control with the other. One valuable lesson that I’ve recently learned about the mechanical side of things is that a step drill bit set is an indispensable time saver, especially when you have many different sizes of holes to drill in the same enclosure.
The rig is all ready to make the trip the Dayton for show and tell. In the meantime, I’m going to try to make a few more QSOs with it when I get a few spare moments. Hope to catch you around 7.030 MHz.
A Quick hint RE Switches
Instead of dilling all the way through your pannel, make a dimple on the BACK of the pannel, and put the anti rotation washer on the back – even if you decide to drill through, another way to make it look good – most switches come with TWO nuts
Run the FIRST nut (usually hex, particularly if you have a nice knurled one as part of the pair) ALL the way down on the switch – then put on the anti-rotation washer, then pass it through the pannel, and then JUST thread on the outer nut – you then use a thin wrench to tighten the inner nut against the BACK of the pannel, and you end up with a MUCH better looking switch mount
@kg2v
Thanks for the excellent tip! I’ll give that a try next time I work on an enclosure. My mechanical skills are not as good as my electronics skills, but I’m at least starting to feel somewhat competent at it.