Achievement unlocked - soldering surface mount components

I did something today I’ve never done before. I soldered a couple of surface mount components onto our latest environmental monitor control board. They are the transistor and the resistor towards the top of the picture. The trick (at least for me) was to get one pin anchored and then work my way around applying a drop of solder paste to each terminal and then heating it up until it melted and formed the joint. I was using a hot air gun (not a very good one) and it took a while to heat things up but at least it worked.

The transistor will control the power to the particle sensor and make it possible for us to make a sensor that consumes only a tiny amount of power when it is not active.