Dave
I suggest keeping this surgery within your comfort zone.? Nothing sacred about surface mount parts, but at 45 MHz keep connections short.? I am not yet considering this particular mod - but you could consider using a small daughter board connected with leads to main board.? At the moment with lower bands doing the best - I suggest the LPF filter relay issue is a bigger deal.? Here in our club build we are adding 3 relays on a daughter board.?
I have been trying the approach of using an added xtal filter at C22 - while it corrects spurious we find it inhibits CW transmit power on 40m.?
I suggest insuring your work can be reversed if correction is found not to work well enough - been there, doing that.?
73 Curt
