Learning RF

[invercargill]

If I wrestle with RF in these modern times the starting point would be a plane sheet of copper clad.
I would first cut a strip off one edge and put it to one side and with the main piece cut the gaps between the intended tracks with a small model drill or even a knife. I would leave as much copper at practical as a ground plane.
Then I would fit surface mount components for the gain stage.
Then I would cut a notch in the edge of the strip I cut off for the transistor and solder it to form a barrier to stop feedback from the input to output.
I would never use strip board because the strips would just form a ladder of capacitors like in a phase shift oscillator.
Using diode tuning will keep the amount of RF components physically small and make the design more predictable.

Could I see an example of this? I fail to visualize how the transistor is mounted...