Tiny chips and other 'stuff'
I mentioned Si5351 chips in the last post, this QCX arrived in a bit of a state, there'd been an issue with the 5V rail which had fried a few chips, the owner had removed the 74ACT00 already (and there was some minor track damage as a result) but wasn't confident he could deal with the Si5351 chip so he was about to scrap the radio. Which seems a bit of a shame for a chip that costs less than £1 but I understand, the chip is tiny and fiddly to rework, it's not a part I'd recommend working with if you've little or no SMD rework experience. I contacted him off list and offered to help, the radio arrived in due course and this is an intermediate progress pic, the Si5351 chip, IC1, removed, prior to flux cleanup. I had to take out C2, R4 and R4 as well as the crystal to be able to get to the tiny MSOP-10 chip, the SOIC-16 FST3253 chip is huge in comparison. After replacement (and removal of the FST3253, it's cheap enough that it's silly not to repla...