Nice little project this evening, 2.3GHz VLNA kit from Sam G4DDK. Comes as a board, tin box and bagged and colour-coded SMDs.  I hand-soldered all the SMDs with the help of my shiny new binocular microscope, needle-pointed thermostatic soldering iron and some 0.3mm solder. Finished thing is pretty small, 36 x 73mm

Close-up with my iPad, too much faff to get the SLR and macro lens out.

Next step is to fit the input matching coils, then the power lead and the RF-absorbent sorbothane  to keep the thing tame. Watch this space…

GB3BSS and GB3ZME are usually about 2dB over noise on 13cm tropo, with some peaks to +10dB from aircraft scatter.  I’m hoping the VLNA will pull that up by a few dB once I get the input matching right