[Arran]

Wow, kinda like stone-age , meets space age. Sort of. By the way, some advise for those thinking of noodling around with surface mount components. be sure to use silver solder. The use of regular 60/ 40 will leach the conductive plate right off the ends component rendering it useless. Silver solder needs to be a bit hotter of course so get in and out of that task quickly.

It would be hard to avoid using silver solder, at least the silver bearing type, it seems to be what most of the stores carry. I will take good old 60/40 tin lead any day, this paranoia about lead has gone too far. Now they are having trouble with tin whiskers forming between joints, deadly in air or space craft. What do they think you are going to do, start licking circuit boards between meals? As for the environmental hazard, lead comes out of the ground in the first place.
Best Regards
Arran