The RF Tank compartment

The tank compartment is lined with aluminum/steel sheet. I used an old PC chassis, and cut it on the bandsaw to make the sides. I just used whatever sheet metalI could get out of that PC chassis. The corners were re-used in the back section of the tank. All squared up as good as it gets. A few tiny holes in the corners left to epoxy.

The dimensions of the sunken cavity is 10" tall, by 9.5" deep and 10" wide from the front panel side.

There's a 1" gap between the tank and the plane for the front panel.

Front Panel

The plexiglass sheet is approximately what I will use for the front panel. I didn't have a thick sheet of Aluminum to use as a place holder. The Load, Tune, Bandswitches, Meters, etc.. will be mounted on the front panel.

The front panel shown is 12" high and 19" wide.

The width of the chassis is 17". There's overhang on each side to allow for the design to be rack mounted.

There may be some work to insert a spacer between the front panel and cavity between the tank and front-panel -- it may not or may not be necessary.

Coil and Cap Layout

Here, the load and tune capacitor are layed out just for sizing up placement. They are not set in and askew. They'll be mounted good and square eventually.

The band switch is in the center, and close to the coil. The tapped-coil is beneath the bandswitch. The bandswitch will be mounted closer to the wall of the tank (towards the front), but still as close as possible to the tapped coil.

The air-variable capacitor on the left is vertically mounted (a right- angle gear will bring the shaft to the front panel).

The fine tuning capacitor is on the right and near the bottom.

The goal is to have the capacitor drives come out at the same height and the bandswitch come out in the center (as close as I can) and still be close to the coil.

Tank With some Rough In Setup

Tune, Load and Coil mounted on a temporary plexi-glass panel for placement.

Bandswitch mounted. Needs to be wired into input tuning network.

Day 3 work