Assembling the Radio

The full guide for the RFM69HCW Bonnet is at https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-radio-bonnets, and in the Antenna Options section it says you can solder on an 8.2 cm wire, which I did originally.

Cut the wire (normal stranded "hookup" wire is fine) just over 8.2cm long to start, trimming the plastic sleeve from one end ready to tin & solder. Insert it from underneath (display/buttons seen as "on top") the RFM69HCW so the tinned end pokes out the hole next to the square/circular uFL connector labelled "Antenna". Solder this to the small copper circle around the hole & double check the length remaining out the other side, trimming the wire if necessary.

Later on I purchased the commercial antenna from the Parts List to see if I could get better signal strengths (not much yet); the photo below shows both connected at the same time as I haven't gotten around to unsoldering the old wire yet, which I really should do! The RPi itself is hidden in a case underneath, which had a cut-out allowing the header to be used.

With antenna added of some sort, shutdown & unplug your RPi then connect the "Bonnet", i.e. the connector on the underside of the radio module mates with the RPi's top-side 40-pin header, then turn it all back on with USB power. The display will be blank until you get the heatmon software running, which is the next step...