Thanks to Tariq tariq.ahmad I received a really nice Kemet HiQ CBR Capacitor Kit today, as a prize for attending a great webinar about RF capacitors!
It's my first Kemet kit. It came at just the right time because I was struggling with an RF project and a lack of suitable capacitors!
I like the book style package, and it contains about 42 different values. These C0G capacitors are ideal for RF projects, as can be seen from the chart! They have a very high self-resonant frequency (SRF). This kit contains a very granular range of capacitances from 0.2 pF up to 100 pF. This is perfect for adjusting RF circuits! It's quite normal to want to swap out capacitors during prototyping. The kit contains a lot of capacitors for this (50 of each value) but often one can reuse capacitors during such prototyping work; therefore it is possible to squeeze many years of use out of a single kit.
(Image source: Kemet PDF datasheet)
The kit contains 0805-sized parts, which are perfect for rapid prototyping, but there are also 0603 and 0402-sized kit versions for those who need them.
The kit folder is great, everything is organized. I can store this kit on a bookshelf.
The capacitor construction is interesting; it uses copper throughout, for low ESR and thus high Q! All the capacitors in this kit are rated at 500V. Ideal for RF work!
(Image source: Kemet datasheet)
I don't have many capacitor kits, so this fills an important gap for prototyping.
The right side of the photo above shows the general-purpose SMD capacitor kits that I now have. The tantalum capacitor kit there is really handy too, but it doesn't have a lot of parts (due to the cost) so I'm always short of those too. The Johanson kit is fairly general-purpose, containing typical X7R capacitors. The kits on the left side are more niche, they are mainly high-voltage capacitor kits.
I really like the kit, it will speed up prototyping tremendously having the selection at hand.
Thanks to element14 and Kemet for the super-interesting webinar, and the kit!
