suggest what type of soldering iron to get

[Draco]

yeah that's the soldering station we used, i was on the team that decided togo with that brand, we made medical devices so they could afford the cost, They wanted every one to use all one brand for calibration and parts logistics, oddly they would not go with the Edsyn desoldering station and stuck with pace for that, (I nick named that older pace solder sucker the suck and clog, I spent more time cleaning it then using it) so I had to buy mine outright as did a few other engineers as the dealer gave us the same volume discount, the advantage is i got to keep the the thing when i left the company.

For soldering temp, that comes from trial and error and personal preference. Too hot can damage things but on a board with a lot of copper you need a lot of heat, just for a short time, I like about 700f for normal solder and work as fast as possible, best advice i can give is find some scrap electronic junk in the trash and start soldering to stuff, they make beginner kits as well or general drilled PC board from radio shack before they all close with a bunch or assorted resistors and start soldering, rat shack pc board needs a lower temp or the copper comes off.
When i first started out i literally used an antique gasoline fueled blow torch to melt the solder from scrap boards, knock the board upside down so all the parts fall out and then solder them into things

[buffo]

If you can find an old Hexacon Thermo-track (search E-bay), you'll be golden. They are impossible to kill. I bought one back in 2008 or so, and it was probably 20 years old then. It's still going strong.

Adam

[Draco]

http://www.edsyn.com/product/ZD500DX.html

That's my desoldering tool and it was in my jeep when i rolled it 8 times and trashed the tool fairly back, broke the handle, the tool holder and a few other parts even though it was in a box and to my surprise the company had all the parts in the exploded diagram and where very helpful and i was able to restore the tool even though it had been about 10 years old at that time and since then i bought a Pelican case for it as i still take it with me when i do field work for the iron i carry i use a Weller W60P with a conical tip with a fixed temp of 700F and a spare for 800. The theory for that type of control is the tip has a magnet in the back, cold the magnet holds a shaft to it that closes a switch, when it heats up the strength of the magnet goes down with the higher heat and causes the spring loaded shaft to let go and open the switch, oddly it seems to be fairly reliable and my first Weller station that used that control worked for 20 + years before the switch in the back failed.
I used to use an ungar UTC 100 but both of mine failed, they stopped regulating and whent well past 800F , i still want to fix them but odly because i have tips for them and spare heating elements, they seem to be scr controlled but the company was bought out by some one else