This week, I finished up all the last little bits including the tuning plate (shot taken with my iPhone 3GS):
And I bolted on the back plate (taken with my Vixia HF100 HD video camera):
The back plate looks scratched because I haven’t removed the plastic covering yet. The seams are pretty good around the bottom although I will end up using conductive copper tape in places to make sure it is completely closed (which may not work because of the high power used)
I did a lot of sanding by hand this week, mostly over my neighbour’s rain barrel as shown in a still from the documentary footage:
The 600 grit sand paper works best when wet and because the inside is round, I did all the final sanding by hand, first with 280 grit then 600. The final sanding was necessary to to remove oxidation from finger prints and flux.
I will be up at the university tomorrow (Friday) to build and solder the probes on because I need the measurements from the simulation. Then we will subject the cavity to the first tests with the low power network analyzer to see how well it resonates, if at the right frequency and how sensitive Q (the quality factor) is to tuning. Like most new things, it will probably work, just not as expected, :-] .