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Ain't that the god damn truth... I'm willing to bet very few of you are coming out of this any better than you went in... prove me wrong!
@freemo I'm learning to make multilayer PCBs with KiCAD. Never used PCB software before. Seems like I'm going to need to start making some footprints.
@comphys Nice! It is easier than you may think.
I will need to order some new PCBs soon too.
@freemo It worked out okay. I struggled to keep my RF and power grounds separate, and I learned about stitching capacitors. I made a board with a 16-way splitter and a variable phase shifter on each output. Went 6 layer PWR,GND,Input,Output,GND,PWRGND. The input and output will both resemble microstrips with their adjacent GND planes.
@freemo thanks, I'll check it out. Ultimately I'm going to put this into a grounded box with sma connectors on the front, so I'm inevitably going to have them connected somewhere.
@comphys yea its usually inevitable anyway. Unless your working really close to the noise floor seperation of grounds tend to be pointless and sometimes even counter productive
@comphys Just keep in mind PGND and AGND do need to be electrically connected and not fully separated (which can be dangerous). The theory behind separation mostly revolves around where you connect them, in the hope that you keep noise out by giving it a path that doesnt go through the circuit.
There seems to be a lot of common misunderstanding around this.
Check this out
https://www.analog.com/en/analog-dialogue/raqs/raq-issue-159.html#