It makes it a more professional looking node if you add a couple of LEDs to the front panel. This is actually very easy to do.

The Blue LED: This lights when the node transmits, you can attach a thin wire to the leg of the resistor where it links to the PTT wire. Then add a 4.7 K resistor, hook it up to the positive leg of the LED, and put the negative leg of the LED to ground.

The Green LED:  This hooks up from the top left-hand leg on the IC chip, just around the corner from where you attached the previous wire. Add a 1 K resistor and wire it to a green LED and then earth it and this will act as a blinking ” keep-alive ” indicator light.

I sometimes also add a red LED with a 47 K resistor wired across the positive and negative power input to the node but really this superfluous. The blue and green ones as explained above are all you need to give you a good idea of what is going on. 

I pass the LED wires under the CM108 so I can glue them to the underside, this helps keep these fragile connections in place.