Any electronics kit builders/homebrewers?

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I was wondering if anybody else here likes building electronic kits or talking a schematic and homebrewing. I'm thinking of getting into it since I can't work at a regular job but it's boring sitting here all day. I have mild dyspraxia and am not a real whiz with a soldering iron, but I hope I can improve a little over time.

I've made or modded most of my Ham Radio gear. What do you need to know?

I'm a General Class ham, and right now I use "appliances", but I'd like to venture into homebrewing. I'd like to make/mod from older schematics, and do things like make a crystal controlled tx but instead of the crystal hook it to an external vfo. I bought an old QST mag from 1968 off Ebay because it has a plan for a three transistor regen SW rx. Some guy on Eham forums built it using antique parts, but I'd like to use parts available at Fry's. Stuff like that, where you really have to think. I bought a Hakko FX888D soldering station today.

Well then, all you need to do is crack something open and get to work!

Start out by tracing out a circuit and drafting your own schematic from it.

Then change a value and see out it affects circuit operation.

Keep notes.

Then find some perf board and construct something - a VFO, an RF field meter, an AF amplifier, an intrusion alarm ... Just keep it simple.

LOL, I don't think I can draw my own circuits, I don't have that sort of knowledge. But I've been told that there are plenty of schematics online, although I haven't actually looked. I also picked up a 1959 copy of How To Become A Radio Amateur while I was poking around on Ebay, I'm hoping that the tube transmitter schematic in there will be easy to upgrade to phone, since back then some companies put out tx's that could be upgraded from CW to phone when the newly minted Novice upgraded. (Back then, Novice was issued for just one year, after which you upgraded or got the boot.) I believe that Heathkit made such a kit, can't remember the model number, maybe DX-60?

I suck at soldering, and I can't say I've ever assembled something out of discrete components (transistors, capacitors, etc), but I do have a bit of experience splicing wires together, and I once rigged together an external hard drive power supply. I've also assembled some really ghetto computer cooling mods. XD