Thanks for the welcome, Gene! I've been around these parts before, but apparently
too long ago and got purged at some point.
I'm not much of an actual circuitry design guy, but I can build or repair a board if the parts are in front of me and I have a schematic to work from. I tend to do more hacking and cobbling - often with dubious results, and I've got plenty of experience with Magic Blue Smoke. An electrical engineer, I am not.
But I'll tell ya what - my solder joints don't break.
I've been meaning to put a soldering tutorial together for a couple of years now, sort of a boiled-down version of that course I taught. Since Darth_Nickel asked, I suppose I should actually get to writing!
I'll see about getting something coherent together over the next few days, with some pictures and such. I know I can't be the only military-trained tech here, so maybe some of the other folks can jump in and keep me honest in case I forget something.
Back on-topic...I think I have some R/C airplane guts in a box somewhere, and I know I have two or ten of those little cars (11 year old son - yeah, that's my excuse!) laying around. I'm very curious now to see if I can make a similar gadget with what I have on hand. We'll know before the weekend is out!