Well the first ResQ kit has officially started its journey to Alabama USA!  This was bought and paid for by someone I have never met nor had any connection to whatsoever. When people spend real money to buy a kit from me I take it to mean that people really do believe in the project!  I'm not crazy after all :)

Kit 001:

This will be the first time I can get some independent feedback on the function and project overall.  I cant wait for more of these :)  Really cool bonus- the new owner is going to be testing it out on a 2.4 GHz control based commercial drone which I haven't tried yet (my control is all ~900 MHz currently).  It should work just fine but real world tests are the best!

For the easiest, lowest price and lowest environmental impacts I'm shipping them with the 2D laser cut enclosure (in the files for you) cut from locally sourced acrylic (plexiglass).  I cut 6 more assemblies this weekend too on my cheap K40 laser cutter. on Thanksgiving day while I was cooking a turkey :) 

I got some baggies from eBay and to give things a bit more of a professional look I'm even factory-sealing them with my handy food saver vacuum sealer which actually works magnificent for this :)

An entire set of components plus stickers and a few other things ships in this standard bubble mailer envelope (from Amazon) which cost me ~$15 to USA which is actually really great for tracked and expedited shipping from Canada. Any larger package would nearly double that price. The laser cut enclosure makes this all possible though. 

I also assembled the SMD pullup resistors on a bunch of the V2 PCBs 

I grabbed a cheap reflow hot-plate in an Amazon sale and finally gave it a try with the resistors

I think it will be handy for preheating boards but TBH- I just used my hot air station to install the resistors way faster and easier.  Maybe I will try the oven someday if a bunch of people want boards.  ResQ kits, PCBs and enclosures are available from my store here if you want one too.  

I am taking a few weeks off I hope to rest and regroup then hopefully some LORA long range tests and some winter missions too.  Some of the enclosures and design could use some updates and improvements but I decided it is far more important to get this project out there in the wild first and keep iterating as we go.  Handy phrase I live by:

Don't let perfect stand in the way of better. 

Still having so much fun with this. Cant wait to see a bunch of ResQ's in the wild!