What are you, Etsy? :P He didn't fab his own silicon, package his own dies, or even machine his own connectors! The hard (and interesting) parts are the desig

What are you, Etsy? :P He didn't fab his own silicon, package his own dies, or even machine his own connectors! The hard (and interesting) parts are the design and testing/debugging phases. Building your own PCB to handle various RF signals at this sort of level is non-trivial in both time and money, and doesn't really gain you much. There's no reason why it should be through-hole either, and indeed, good luck finding suitable parts in those packages. SMD manual soldering isn't particularly hard either, although time consuming. If you have a reflow or spare toaster oven, you can do it a whole lot faster too.