>The issue is that one of the cap legs is soldered to a
>ground plane, which is huge and often used as a heat sink
>for other nearby components (including the cap itself).
>
>You need to get a large tip for your iron, preferably hot.
>It'll take awhile to warm it up, since you're heating the
>entire local ground plane.  If your tip is in poor condition
>add some solder to the joint - it'll melt and help conduct
>heat into the joint.
>
>Unless you have a very good solder sucker, you'll find
>that you can't easily clean out the hole as well.  I
>either heat just the lead of the cap (not the whole joint)
>during the removal stage and wiggle it as it cools
>without removing it from the hole.

My favourite method if a ground plane is involved, is to remove the
component without attempting to clear the hole, then have a large tip normal
iron on one side, and actively heated solder sucker, preferably with a
reasonable size tip, on the other. In both cases I use as large a tip as
will make reasonable thermal contact to maximise the thermal source
capacity, thereby heating the joint rapidly and minimising damage to the
surrounding area by copper lift and substrate delamination.

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