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Vintage Amateur and Military Radio Amateur/military receivers and transmitters, morse, and any other related vintage comms equipment.

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Old 13th Dec 2018, 12:36 pm   #1
HILLCLIMBER
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Default NRD 535 545 Comparisons

Good morning and thank you for the welcome message Paul, my first post although I have been an SWL for many years starting with ex military B40, Trio Kenwood R1000, Yaesu FRG 8800 and Kenwood R5000, I have recently aquired an NRD 535D with matching speaker and this has rekindled my interest (along with retirement) certainly a superb radio, now I have the possibility to buy an NRD 545, (do I need another radio ? of course not) my question is has anyone had direct experience of running both radios and if so do you think there is any advantage the 545 has over the 535D.

Many thanks for your time, kind regards Roger
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Old 13th Dec 2018, 3:02 pm   #2
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Default Re: NRD 535 545 Comparisons

I haven't had either but reckon you would be going from an analogue set at the top of its game to an early dsp set with years of development yet to come.

Cheers,

Colin.
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Old 13th Dec 2018, 8:22 pm   #3
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Default Re: NRD 535 545 Comparisons

There were some early reports of 'whistles, noise and monkey chatter' when tuning within 20 kHz of a strong signal in AM mode. I think this was addressed, but not sure how many of the early ones actually appeared on the market. There is a previous thread on this somewhere.
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Old 15th Dec 2018, 11:57 pm   #4
HILLCLIMBER
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Default Re: NRD 535 545 Comparisons

Thanks for your replies gentlemen, I have searched partway through the archives, will look a bit further.
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Old 17th Dec 2018, 7:49 pm   #5
John KC0G
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Default Re: NRD 535 545 Comparisons

Hillclimber, welcome

The NRD-535 was sold from 1991-1998 (price ca. $1200), and the NRD-545 (price ca. $1800) from 1998-2007.

Sources of good information are scarce, but https://www.prc68.com/I/NRD545.shtml is one place to start. Some of the links are dated, but you can use www.archive.org to get back to them

Dave Zantow has a page at http://n9ewo.angelfire.com/nrd545.html

John Wilson reviewed the 545 in the July 1998 issue of Short Wave Magazine. You can find the review at www.americanradiohistory.com

Some earlier discussion on the 545 can be found in posts #54, #59 and #61 of https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/...d.php?t=148359
Bob Sherwood stills sell a filter upgrade for the 545. See: www.sherweng.com

There were reviews of the 545 in each edition of Passport to World Band Radio from 1999 to 2008. In the later editions they comment that the issues of "monkey chatter" and other manifestations of DSP overload vary widely from one listening situation to another. Some people hear it, and others don't or believe that it is insignificant. Reader feedback suggested that most did not find it to be a significant drawback. They also commented that JRC had never done any firmware updates, which they felt to be necessary and overdue.

I think that there are two important questions here:
1. How does the 545 play? The information above suggests it would be very useful to be able to try before you buy.
2. How will you repair the radioo if and when something goes wrong? It has been reported that factory repairs ceased at the end of 2017 See: https://swling.com/blog/2017/11/jrc-...rd-545-series/
I don't know if there any well-known problems with this radio (the Kenwood R5000 had issues with key bounce, and VCO's due to potting compound). I also don't know what parts might now be unobtainable. Microprocessors and displays are two things which immediately come to mind. Dave Zantow suggests that the CCFL (fluorescent display backlight) will at some stage fail.

You should investigate these matters for yourself. Caveat emptor and good luck.

John
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Old 22nd Jan 2019, 5:21 am   #6
John KC0G
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Default Re: NRD 535 545 Comparisons

Flicking through some old issues of Short Wave Magazine, I found that John Wilson did a follow-up article on the NRD-545 receiver in the August 1998 issue JRC had sent him a new set of ROM's. He commented that the hole at +/- 400Hz and 'awful distortion" had disappeared. The monkey chatter seem to be improved. He much preferred an external speaker over the internal speaker. Overall he was much more positive about the radio.

This review is not currently available at www.americanradiohistory.com
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Old 22nd Jan 2019, 10:32 am   #7
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Default Re: NRD 535 545 Comparisons

JRC did pretty well with the analogue receivers in the NRD5x5 series, but when things changed over to DSP, they started to get left behind.

The other Japanese manufacturers put their best HF receivers in their transceivers and saw the receiver market as more a poor relation for SWLs on a budget. Maybe the Icom R9000 was an exception.

You could consider a transceiver and just never plug in a mike or a key. This broadens your horizons a bit.

In general, the early DSP sets were a bit of a step backwards. People thought DSP would fix everything and took their eye off the performance of the analogue sections in their front ends, and they grossly underestimated the amount of DSP processor power needed for goof performance, and the bit-widths needed. Best skip a generation or two and jump in after some expensive lessons were learned, or go for one of the best of the analogue generation.

David
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