Hey Earl,
This product construction is very similar to ours.

Last year I made several visits to a CM in the San Jose area who was having
trouble with the solder of "our" parts. Turns out that they were having
trouble with any part of this type construction, filters, vco's pll's etc.

Here's what I learned from that exercise;

1) Don't let anyone X-ray the parts. Since the castelations are so large
(compared to std leadless ceramic chip carriers) they tend to suck up
solder. X-ray analysis shows voids on the bottom pads.  This is not a
problem since the electrical connection is to the top side through the "half
moon via" aka castelation. The connection is ok mechanically too, my
customers component engineer tore a part off the board with vise grips, the
PCB failed before the solder connection. (This ended our discussion with the
CM about the reliability of the solder joint.)

2) This shouldn't be a problem with EM Research but watch out for burrs in
the castelations, they inhibit a good filet.

The gold plating doesn't seem to do anything but help with this type of
part. We use it on some of our high end parts but avoid it because of cost
considerations on the commodity product lines.

Hope you find this helpful,
Dan

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