small update

Not much progress to report.
I am building the micro controller board. It is ready for the first test. I'll try to make a led blink.
This time the 16F877 is used instead of the 16F84. I suppose it will work. Tonight I will try.
Meanwhile I found a LCD driver suitable for my LCD .Controlling a display will be the next step.
After that I'll add the rotary encoder.

ON4AIO suggested to use the AFC input of the tuner for small sweeps. The 1st LO must be at a steady at a fixed frequency. This is a good idea. I was a bit worried about small sweeps <1 MHz/div. The stability may be insufficient after all the tuning sensitivity (MHz/V) is large. Using the AFC for small sweeps relaxes some of the requirements. I'll give it a try but I will build start with the large sweeps first.