Brooke's NRD-545 page

Background

There is a report in the Passport to World Band Radio that says that the DSP chip in the 545 has digital noise crosstalk that causes the ultimate rejection to be tens of dB lower that it should be.  This may be the case, but the reason that I got this receiver is that it has the narrowest IF filter bandwidth available at 10 Hz.  This allows listening for the carrier of an AM station or the carrier of a TV station.  It also allows decoding WWV's 100Hz digital data by reading the s-meter with a computer.

Review in German -

Setup
Cable
Spectrum Plots

Low Frequencies
AM Broadcast Band
FM Broadcast Band
Wide Band Scans
44 Meter Aero & Fixed
34 Meter Maritime Coastal
22 Meter SW BCB
19 Meter SW BCB

The Setup

McKay - Dymec DA-100 (now called a Stoner-  ) active antenna located very near my GPS base antenna so the location of the antenna is:

Latitude:       39:11:24.692 N   Longitude:    123:09:50.548 W   Altitude:    249.7 meters  819' 3" (WGS-84)

This is the antenna used up to 30 MHz.  Above 30 MHz I now am using a Radio Shack Scanner antenna (20-176) until I can put up better antennas.  This antenna is connected using about 50 feet of 75 Ohm coax and no amplifier.
The computer is an HP 8380 Pavilion with the HP M70 Monitor both of which are very RF quiet.

Also the B&W 1.8-30 terminated Folded Dipole is used with much better results.

Cable

The RS-232 cable that is sold by Universal radio to go with this receiver has DB-25(m) connectors on both ends and is a null modem cable:
1    -    1
2    -    3
3    -    2
4    -    5
5    -    4
6    -    20
7    -    7
17    -    24
20    -    6
24    -    17
It turns out that my computer only has DB-9(m) com ports (which have a reversed pin numbers from the 25 pin cables) so I made up my own cable (545toPC.pdf drawing):
 

NRD-545	Cable	Computer
DB-25(m)		DB-9(f)
2 Tx	Red	2 Rx
3 Rx	Green	3 Tx
4 RTS	White	7 RTS
5 CTS	Black	8 CTS
7 Gnd	Shield	5 Gnd
		1, 4, 9*

* on the computer connector pins 1, 4 and 9 are tied toghther.  This fools the computer into seeing hardware flow control, it may or may not be needed here, but I do this to be safe.

JRC NRD 545 Controlling Software N545PRO.EXE

The English version is new as of March 2003.

Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 11:58:32 +0100
   From: Martin-Fischer-von-Frieling@t-online.de
Subject: Re: N545Pro Software now Freeware

Registration is easy. Enter the program, click

Help
then
Registration...
enter

NRD545EN   as ID

2B353B84344E508A  as Password

Thats all

Cheers n´ beers, Martin

http://www.thiecom.de/mlb.htm  Receiving longwire matching transformer for 100 kHz to 40 Mhz German page but "RF Systems" in title.

NRDWIN Spectrum Plots

There is a spectrum plotting function in the NRDWIN software.  The radio is set up for mode, IF bandwidth, etc. then the "Setup" function in the PanoranaRecv program is set for Start, Stop and Step, and single/continous sweep, when OK is clicked, the scan starts.  When the plot appears, if the cursor is clicked once a marker is seen and with a double click the radio is tuned to the marker frequency.  It is hard to get the cursor exactly on the peak so I typically need to go back to the receiver and tune up or down a little.  The plot does NOT show the mode and IF BW, adding these would be a good thing.
Radio Locator -  Extensive data including station web pages
AM FM Station -

Low Frequencies

When listening to NDBs (Non Directional Beacons) with a narrow IF BW the LSB carrier and USB can be separately tuned.

10 kHz    - 100 kHz, CW-narrow
100 kHz  - 200 kHz, CW-narrow
200 kHz  - 300 kHz, CW-narrow
300 kHz - 500 kHz, CW-narrow

AM Broadcast Band

One thing that became clear is that this receiver is picking up more than one station on many frequencies!  Sometimes it is possible to separate them using either LSB, USB or ECSS (pressing this button causes LSB then USB then OFF, sequentially).  Note that plain old LSB and USB depend on the accuracy of the station carrier relative to the NRD-545 (I have the high stability option) and may work better than ECSS in this case of 2 stations.  A long term solution is a stearable antenna system.  I will be working on that in the future.

500 kHz - 1800 kHz, step 0.25 kHz, CW-narrow mode, all the following AM BCB plots were done with 0.25 kHz steps

500 kHz - 700 kHz,    CW-narrow mode
700 kHz - 900 kHz,    AM-narrow mode
900 kHz - 1100 kHz,  AM-narrow mode
1100 kHz - 1300 kHz, AM-narrow mode
1300 kHz - 1500 kHz, AM-narrow mode - my local AM station is easy to see
1500 kHz - 1700 kHz, AM-narrow mode - a number of stations are in the new 1600 to 1700 band

The 545 will receive stero AM and FM when headphones or an external amplifier are used.

www.AMStereoRadio.com - has station listings

FM Broadcast Band

88 MHz - 108 MHz, FMW mode - There is a HUGE birdie at 106 MHz!  The manual mentions that there will be some.

Wide Band Scans

Birdie Search - 30 - 1230 MHz - there appears to be a limit of 1,000 MHz in the NRDWIN panaromama software.
5.0 - 10.0 MHz, AMw  23:00 UTC
10.0 - 15.0 MHz AMw
15.0 - 20.0 MHz AMw
108.0 - 136.0 AMw

44 Meter Aero & Fixed

6,525 kHz - 7,000 kHz CWn

34 Meter Maritime Coastal

8,195 - 8,815 kHz CWn

22 Meter SW BCB

13,600 - 13,700 kHz CWn
13,700 - 13,800 kHz CWn
13,800 - 13,900 kHz CWn

19 Meter SW BCB

15,100 - 15,200 kHz CWn
15,200 - 15,300 kHz CWn
15,300 - 15,400 kHz CWn
15,400 - 15,500 kHz CWn
15,500 - 15,600 kHz CWn

LabVIEW

Modification

There's a rumor that if you put a zero Ohm resistor (short) in the R13 position inside the converter it will unblock the receiver, but I have not yet confirmed this.

Links

545

Decoders & Computer control

Multicoupler (Rx)

Antenna Coupler (Tx)

Note that an antenna coupler typically has a ceramic insulator holding a connection for a wire that goes to the antenna.
The coupler is placed very near the antenna.
An antenna tuner (aka line flattener) typically has coax inputs and coax outputs and is used near the transmitter.

Other Receivers

Tranceivers

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