Perry Sandeen, KM6FQV: A Boat Anchor Radio Legend

How one determined editor turned decades of mailing-list wisdom into the most important single reference document the R-390A community has ever produced — and then kept right on giving.

In the boatanchor world, the people who matter most are rarely the ones with the loudest voices. They are the ones who do the work — who take a scattered mess of mailing-list posts, tribal knowledge, half-remembered mods, and hard-won field experience and organize it into something the next generation can actually use. Perry Sandeen is one of those people.

As lead editor of “The 21st Century R-390A/URR Technical Reference” — universally known as the Y2K Manual — Perry took personal responsibility for collecting, editing, re-paginating, and expanding what had begun as an ambitious community project into the single most comprehensive reference document ever produced for the Collins R-390A military HF receiver. That manual, now in its third major release, covers everything from initial safety inspection to advanced IF deck modifications, and it remains freely available to anyone who wants it.

But the Y2K Manual is only part of the story. Perry has spent years as an active contributor to the R-390 mailing list reflector at mailman.qth.net, offering practical advice on tube substitutions, rectifier upgrades, alignment procedures, and component selection. He championed the preservation of the Hollow State Newsletter archive, calling out to the list that its roughly fifty issues contain a wealth of in-depth technical material — particularly the pioneering modification articles by the late Dr. Dallas Lankford. And when the TreeTop Circuits SSB product detector business faced extinction after its original owner retired, it was Perry who stepped in and purchased the entire operation to keep it alive for the community.

The Y2K Manual: A Community Bible

The origins of the Y2K Manual trace back to the late 1990s, when the R-390A enthusiast community recognized that the original 1985 Navy technical manual (SPAWAR 0913-LP-009-1400) — itself a revision of the 1970 NAVELEX document — was showing its age. Written in dense military prose, structured around depot-level test jigs that no longer existed, and printed in formats that did not reproduce well, the official TMs were increasingly difficult for civilian restorers to follow.

A group of dedicated volunteers — including Al Tirevold, Barry Hauser, DW Holtman, Gary Gitzen, Tom Norris, James A. (Andy) Moorer, Scott Seickel, and Matt Parkinson — set about creating a modern, practical, community-sourced alternative. Perry Sandeen took the lead editorial role beginning with Release 3, managing the enormous task of incorporating new chapters, reformatting existing content for more efficient use of page space, improving the parts lists, and reducing file sizes for easier distribution.

“I guess I’m the lucky sucker that was appointed author. OK, just so everyone understands that I take NO responsibility for anyone getting hurt playing around with this radio stuff. Radios are fun, but not to die for.”
— Perry Sandeen, Y2K-R3 Front Matter

Behind that self-deprecating humor lay a meticulous editorial process. Perry took personal responsibility for all additions, re-pagination, and the material in the additional chapters that expanded the manual’s scope well beyond the original Navy document. He incorporated material from open websites specifically to ensure preservation — noting that web resources had a troubling tendency to disappear without warning, and that capturing community knowledge in a single distributable document was the best insurance against that loss.

The Y2K Manual was released as a free document with explicit permission to copy, modify, and distribute. That decision — deliberate and principled — ensured that the community’s collective wisdom would remain accessible regardless of what happened to any individual website, mailing list, or server. The most current version remains hosted at r-390a.net/Y2K-R3.

Release 3 expanded the manual to include three new chapters of shared wisdom covering upgrades, modifications, and parts information. Perry edited and integrated contributions from across the community, including David Wise’s AGC modification articles (with digital figures courtesy of DW Holtman), Dallas Lankford’s SSB and AGC circuit work, and practical restoration guides covering the R-390A’s notoriously complex geartrain, power supply, and IF deck subsystems. The result is a document that runs to hundreds of pages and remains, more than fifteen years after its last major release, the first thing experienced restorers tell newcomers to download.

The Quiet Workhorse of the R-390 Reflector

Perry’s contributions extend far beyond the Y2K Manual. A regular presence on the R-390 mailing list for years, he has been the kind of contributor who makes a technical community actually function — not through grand pronouncements, but through consistent, practical, patient help.

When overseas members of the list struggled with the original military TMs — written in dense “militarese” and structured around obsolete test equipment — it was Perry who gently redirected them to the Y2K-R3 manual, reminding the list that the original TMs were created nearly seventy years ago and that the community’s own updated reference was far more practical for civilian use.

His technical interests ranged broadly across the R-390A ecosystem. He investigated tube substitutions, exploring the tradeoffs between the standard 6BA6 and alternatives like the 6BZ6 and 6DC6 for low-noise IF applications, advocating thoughtfully for carbon film resistor replacements over the original carbon composition types. He researched rectifier alternatives, championing the 5AR4/GZ34 as a superior replacement in many boatanchor power supply applications and exploring the 12BW4 solution for the R-390A’s 26Z5 rectifier positions. He prepared and cleaned up schematics for other authors’ modification articles, including the schematic work credited to him in the Lankford 2-diode SSB AGC modification document.

He was also a connector — someone who remembered who had done what, who pointed people to the right resources, and who freely shared reference material. In October 2024, he posted to the list specifically to remind members about the Hollow State Newsletter archive, noting that its roughly fifty issues contained Dallas Lankford’s deep technical work on receiver modifications and encouraging everyone to study the material.

Saving TreeTop Circuits: Business Preservation as Community Service

When Bob, VE3TOU, announced he was closing down the TreeTop Circuits business — the only commercially manufactured SSB product detector specifically designed for the R-390A, R-390, R-388, and SP-600 receivers — Perry saw a community resource about to disappear and refused to let it die.

Having worked with Bob on developing a TreeTop version for the Hammarlund SP-600 and owning several of the modules himself, Perry understood their value firsthand. He purchased the entire business — inventory, tooling, PCB files, and software — investing over $2,000 of his own money. His plan was to partner with a manufacturing associate to resume production, with the long-term goal of transitioning the business forward.

“I didn’t want to see what seems to be the only commercially manufactured SSB product detector product die.”
— Perry Sandeen, R-390 Reflector, January 2026

When health challenges and his manufacturing partner’s medical issues delayed production, Perry kept the community informed and ultimately arranged for the business to be transferred to new hands — ensuring the TreeTop product line would continue to serve the boatanchor community rather than simply fading away.

The Measure of a Community Builder

What makes Perry Sandeen a Boatanchor Radio Legend is not any single dramatic achievement but rather the cumulative weight of decades of steady, selfless contribution. He edited the definitive reference manual. He preserved endangered technical knowledge. He bought a dying business to keep it alive. He answered questions on the mailing list with patience and good humor. He pointed people to resources they didn’t know existed. He cleaned up other authors’ schematics so their work would be more useful.

Every person who has ever downloaded the Y2K Manual to troubleshoot an IF alignment problem, looked up a part number in its updated parts list, or followed one of its modification procedures owes a debt to Perry’s editorial work. Every newcomer who was told “just download the Y2K manual” as their first step into R-390A restoration benefited from his decision to make that document freely distributable.

At the time of this writing, Perry remains active on the R-390 reflector as KM6FQV, still sharing knowledge, still connecting people, still looking out for the community. The R-390A world is richer for his presence in it.