Marconi TF2650 FET meter

[Yorkie]

I've never been a great fan of 'dead bug, Manhattan, or ugly style' construction even though from an RF point of view, it may sometimes be the best system. I've always felt that it smacks of 'I'll build it rough first, then if it works, I'll build it properly' which of course seldom happens. It either doesn't work, or if it does, it never gets re-built neatly. I did however build a 200 MHz digital frequency counter designed by David M Pratt which featured in Radcom in 1976, in which the input circuits were built 'dead bug style' and the rest of the counter built on Veroboard and tag-boards.  It worked very well, and still does 40 years later - last year I passed it on to Joe. (David Pratt became Chief Examiner for the City and Guilds Amateur Radio Exam for many years, until the C&G pulled out of the RAE due to the exam being so elementary relative to its other courses, for professional trade skills).

The HF input circuit of the counter first divided the frequency by ten, then by 40, so if for example the input was 200 MHz, that was divided down to 5 MHz before passing to the rest of the counter. (In the pic, the left-hand input circuit is AF, the right-hand is HF). Although it did win the 'constructors' prize' at the Sheffield Amateur Radio Club, looking at it now, I can't say that I'm overly impressed with the standard of construction, but it was my first major homebrew project, and it did work, so yes - dead bug, tag-boards and strip-board do have their place. (I removed all of the disused strips on the Veroboards, which I found offensive to the eye, as well as being redundant).

For a long time now, I've preferred to design PCBs even for simple circuits.

I'm often amazed at what - to me - looks like a rat's nest when I look beneath the chassis of many, if not most, valve radios, with just a jumble of wire and overlapping components. I find it hard to believe that this stemmed from considerations about optimising performance, nor do I think that for production lines, it minimised costs. My least favourite radio is the Bush DAC90A, the shortcomings of which are well known, but at least Bush made an attempt at neatness with the underside tagboard. Same with the round Ekco A22 with it's neat tag-board around the perimeter of the chassis, as compared to other round Ekcos which are a diabolical jumble of wires and components.

None of the above comments have any relevance to this thread, so getting back on topic, looking at the HLY7006R IC package, it has 22 pins and is about 3cms x 2.5cms in size (not 'DIL' format - more like SMD, with two rows of 11 pins, of which 11 are active). I guess it would be possible to design a little board from the circuit that Nick posted, and make it pin compatible with the IC, with pinouts to solder into place.

Sorry for taking the thread off topic!

Dribbled and waffled Yorkie.