Dallas Lankford & NRD-525/535 Mods

The ARRL Contest Update for May 13, 2009 included a mention of Dallas Lankford and a link to a collection of his writings on various technical topics, including several pieces on the JRC NRD-525 receiver. This struck me with a blast of nostalgia.

Though we never met, Dallas and I had exchanged letters (not emails, mind you, but real, honest-to-God handwritten letters!) when I worked for JRC about filter modifications to the NRD-525/535. Almost all of it went straight over my head as I am merely an appliance operator compared to Dallas, but with his help I managed to successfully install some Collins torsional mechanical filters in my NRD-535 by changing out a bunch of the surface-mount components that comprised the filters' input and output impedance matching networks. It was a big accomplishment for me, even though I had to butcher up a perfectly good CFH-36 filter board...

Don't try this at home, kids.

I lost touch with Dallas after I left JRC, but I have copies of all of his letters in my file cabinet, a reminder of a great gentleman and maestro of the radio arts. The above linked files are required reading for anyone who wants to dig into his NRD-525.