The revised  microphone fanout board for the Yaesu 857D radio arrived today. This one was designed from the schematic that shipped with my radio. All of the wierdness is gone with the interface. I can control the 857D radio via the Hamlib rigctl tool and read data back as well. This means that my USB to CAT/CI-V interface boards that have optional half or full duplex via a jumper are working too!

This is the built up fanout board. All of the connectors were re-used from the original, messed up board.

Removing the surface mount components is quite easy. I put the old board on top of my re-flow hot plate and turned the heat up a little, and then picked up the free connectors with a pair of tweezers. The RJ45 through hole connectors were a little messier, requiring a pair of pliers to pull off the board.

Cleaning up another semi-related project, I got tired of handling a bare PCB whenever I went to use it. The USB to CAT/CI-V boards are pretty small and I wanted some protection for them, so I designed and fabricated enclosures for them. Now they are all powder coated and looking clean. The only thing missing are labels for the boxes.

Here are two of the USB to CAT/CI-V boards in their new enclosures. The green box is the 2 channel RS232 to RJ45 project that motivated me to make the other enclosures. It is used to control the satellite antenna rotator.

The tops of the enclosures were folded up from 0.030" 5051 aluminum and the baseplates are 0.090" 6061 aluminum. Figuring out how to transfer the dimensional data out of my PCB CAD system into the mechanical drawing CAD system has been interesting. I think that process needs some more work.