Ordering sites

[datmafia]

Hello all at DIYC. I'd like to say that I'm very glad your forum exists and that so many helpful people are involved. I'm still in the very early stages of this hobby and the approach I'm taking is to start with the Basics of electronics. With that in mind I set out online to some of the electronic suppliers I found through the posts here @ DIYC. Since I'm the ultimate newbie in this forum I thought getting a Solder Practice Kit (SP-3B) would be wise. I have found 3 places:
http://www.electronickits.com , http://www.circuitspecialists.com and http://kitsrus.com who link to other supplier sites only. Of those does anyone have experience with these places? Is there another more hobby-friendly site that DIYC'er's use? I would like to avoid the "You ordered it from where? Good luck..." scenarios you see so often on other forums.
Thank You
:)

[Dan Ross]

If you haven't seen it yet take a look at this post it has a link to a good tutorial on how to solder http://www.christmasinshirley.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=859

You can pick up electronic projects from radio shack along with an inexpensive soldering iron just to get started. I soldered all my stuff (3 595's, 48 SSR's, 3 REN-C's and 1 REN-T) with a $15 radioshack soldering iron. Yes the more expensive ones are a lot nicer to work with but try explaining that to my wife.

[Macrosill]

I have personally ordered from Circuit Specialists and even had a warranty issue and they handled it better than I could have hoped for.

[stempile]

Everyones experience is different. There are places I won't use that people on here (the forum) rave about... So you never know until you order. Also I often order stuff from ebay and random yahoo stores, sometimes that can be hit or miss. But for what you are looking for you aren't risking much... Just order from the closest/fastest/cheapest.

ms

[xmus]

datmafia,

thanks for those links, the second one had affordable soldering stations...
I've been holding out for one, I finally made the purchase.
My trusty, 30 year old Weller station gave up the smoke a month ago, after building 12 Ren16 boards.... (351 solder points each = >4K solder points total).