Matt Parkinson

Matt Parkinson is one of the credited contributors to “The 21st Century R-390A/URR Technical Reference” — the Y2K Manual — the document that transformed the R-390A from an equipment type served by scattered, aging military manuals into one supported by a comprehensive, community-built technical reference. His name appears in the contributor list for Release 3 (July 2009), the most complete edition of the manual, which added new chapters covering receiver optimization, modification documentation, and modern parts cross-references.

The Community Reference

The Y2K Manual’s Release 3 was the culmination of nearly a decade of community effort. Beginning with Al Tirevold’s original editorial vision in 2000 and expanding through two subsequent releases, the document grew from a corrected version of the 1985 Navy technical manual into a comprehensive reference that incorporated the R-390A community’s entire body of shared knowledge. The manual’s eleven chapters — spanning general information, operation, functional description, scheduled maintenance, troubleshooting, corrective maintenance, parts lists, installation, and the expanded chapters on upgrades and modifications — represent the most complete treatment of the R-390A ever assembled.

Contributors to Release 3, including Matt Parkinson, provided the practical expertise that made the manual’s expanded content authoritative. The new material covered topics that no official military manual had ever addressed: modern component substitutions for parts that had been out of production for decades, modifications that improved the receiver’s performance beyond its original specifications, and the accumulated troubleshooting wisdom of a community that had collectively restored thousands of receivers.

The Y2K Manual Project

The project was led by principal editor Al Tirevold, WAØHQQ, from Kennesaw, Georgia, with co-editors Barry Hauser in New York and Pete Wokoun, KH6GRT, in Ewa Beach, Hawaii. Pete redrew every schematic in Visio, replacing the degraded originals with clean digital artwork. Release 3 was assembled by Perry Sandeen, who coordinated contributions from across the community and added the landmark Chapter 11 covering upgrades, modifications, and parts information. The editorial conventions — shaded text blocks for additions, strike-through for deletions, attributed footnotes throughout — ensured transparency about what came from the original manuals and what was contributed by the community.

More than twenty-five individuals are credited as contributors across the Y2K Manual’s releases, and each name represents a body of practical experience — receiver variants examined, problems diagnosed, solutions discovered and verified — that enriched the document. The manual’s licensing terms, established by the editorial team, placed the document in the public domain: free to copy, modify, and distribute without restriction, embodying the community’s fundamental commitment to shared knowledge.

A Named Contribution

The Y2K Manual’s editorial conventions required attribution for all added and modified content. This transparency — a hallmark of Al Tirevold’s editorial approach — means that the manual serves not only as a technical reference but as a record of who contributed what to the community’s knowledge base. Matt Parkinson’s inclusion among the named contributors places his work within the permanent record of the R-390A community’s collective achievement.

In a hobby where individual contributions often disappear when a personal website goes offline or a mailing list archive becomes inaccessible, the Y2K Manual provides permanence. The knowledge that Matt Parkinson and his fellow contributors shared has been captured in a document that the community has preserved, distributed, and relied upon for more than two decades — and will continue to rely upon for as long as R-390A receivers are maintained and operated.

“We want this document to be of the greatest possible use to the public, and believe that the best way to achieve this is to make it free from proprietary claims.”
— Y2K Manual Preface, Al Tirevold, Barry Hauser, and Pete Wokoun, May 29, 2000