Getting ready to build a HF rig

[N7OQ]

Has anyone here built are in the process of building a Picastar radio. http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/picastar/
I'm starting to get the parts together to build this radio, got about 1500 square inches of blank double sides pc board material coming. Looks like quite a challenge to build, a lot of surface mount parts and some chips have 127 leads very close spaced. Should help to hone my soldering skills. The nice thing is you can build it one board at a time at your own pace. Should be fun and should keep me busy for quite awhile.

[Radio]

I noted it has no "case"...made entirely of PCB material. Wow.

Definately beyond my abilities...but the HW-101 I build 30 years ago still works!

[w7wv]

Enjoy the project.
I spent a number of years working on the bench in electronics as a civilian for the Navy working mainly on the nuclear subs.
I built lots of HeathKits as a kid too but that was before my ham days. My father even had me build one of the color TVs for him at the time.
I liked soldering until I had to qualify to make high density sold plugs for the sonar system.
Some 84 connectors in about 1.5-2" round plug. It drove me buggy and I was not very fast at it. The good news was that I did not have that job long.
The club I was with bought a couple of the K-2 kits a few years ago with the idea that it would teach some members to solder and we could use them for Field Day.
For the most part the kits were built by the experiences as most of the new people would not take the time to come to the club to learn solder techniques.
A few years ago I ran into a HeathKit at a garage sale that had been soldered with pipe solder. That's right, acid core. I know a guy that bought it cheap and spent a lot of time cutting wiring out and trying to make it work again. The corrosive acids had eaten the wiring and connections they were soldered to. It was a depth finder so there were not that many connections in it.
Today, after retirement and many years away from the bench I am still good at soldering.
It's a shame today that we don't have more project kits out there.