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I started working in a TV shop at 13, in 1965. One older tech was a fountain of practical knowledge. I wasn't old enough to open an account at the local parts house, so he would buy things for me so Ii didn't have to go through our boss and pay his markup. He bought me my first desoldering iron which was a professional version of that Radio Shack version. It was made by Endevco, and it was almost $40 which was a lot for a kid making a buck an hour after school. He was also the one who got me started on Ersin Multicore solder. I've never regretted paying a little extra for good solder, because there was very little waste.

We handed the resale of a wave solder machine for Lockheed Martin around 1990, along with other process equipment after they shut down a production line in one of the Orlando plants.

Microdyne was still using the same grade of paste solder they tarted with, even though the SMD parts were a lot smaller than the first they used. I had to fight with Manufacturing engineering to buy a type with smaller solder balls and a RMA flux. The fine pitch ICs (IE: MC68340) came out of the early ovens with unmelted solder balls under the ICs, and the 0402 passives were tombstoning. They had spent a wad on that Heller oven, but the quality hadn't changed. Once we had better solder, we could refine the reflow profiles. That eliminated over 95% of the reflow problems within a few months, as they continued to refine the profiles.

Did you build much equipment for your Amateur radio hobby? I went a different route, into broadcasting. Not many hams ever got to pump out 5MW EIRP of RF from a 1700 foot tower. :)

Michael A. Terrell