Now it’s time to put the soldering iron down for a while and pick up our metal working tools. Our little project needs a box to live in. Although not a real beauty, we used the same project box Loftur is using. The Hammond 1411QU.
If you have some extra cash to spend you can go and find much more professional looking boxes, laser cut and engraved. When doing this project with your club (and thus in need of several boxes), I strongly recommend considering this option. Hand Drilling, cutting and filing the project box is feasible if you only need to do it once. Making 10 of these boxes by hand can be another of your hobbies, but not mine. When ordering custom made boxes in quantities above 10, you can still get them at a reasonable price.
In our case, we did the drilling, cutting and filing with a simple drill, a Dremel alike multi-tool and an ordinary file.
We didn’t mind the scratches as we would paint it afterwards anyway. Another advantage of custom made, laser cut and powder coated, or ionized painted cases is that the paint job will not easily come off. Using spray paint is not an issue if you put the Automatic Magnetic Loop Controller in your shack and keep it there. I took mine already on several trips, showing it off at other ham radio clubs while presenting this magnificent project. Not that I don’t like it anymore, or that it would not perform as before, but it got its battle marks.
