sonsivri dot com is my fav electronics forum.
Best way to learn is t give yourself a project to do and learn everything you need to do to complete that project, bit like your PIC programmer experience. Google has all the answers and all the answers are not all in the same place. Search, Read, Search, Read, repeat...
As for a soldering iron get yourself a decent temperature controlled iron. Some cheap clones are sold on eBay and are almost as good as the real namebrand thing. No need for a LCD screen, just a knob with temperature settings on it. You can also get some very cheap second hand ones. But why bother at the price of the cheap ones from china...
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