Fieldcraft HF radio

[KEbravo4]

any viable civilian options for HF radio manpacks?? thanks

 

[Alpine 338]

any viable civilian options for HF radio manpacks?? thanks

Lots of good ones if you go the QRP (10W or less) route. I'm eyeballing the new Lab599 Discovery TX-500 offering. It's made in Russia, and looks to be the Cats Meow for a rugged unit. Other offerings are;

AeroStream Communications CommRadio CTX-10

Elecraft KX2 and KX3

Yausu FT-817 or FT-818

And then there's the usual Made in China crap that I try to stay away from.

No matter which radio you go with, a usable battery will be the heaviest part of it.

There are a few companies that make backpacks for most of the radios listed above.

 

[KEbravo4]

Lots of good ones if you go the QRP (10W or less) route. I'm eyeballing the new Lab599 Discovery TX-500 offering. It's made in Russia, and looks to be the Cats Meow for a rugged unit. Other offerings are;

AeroStream Communications CommRadio CTX-10

Elecraft KX2 and KX3

Yausu FT-817 or FT-818

And then there's the usual Made in China crap that I try to stay away from.

No matter which radio you go with, a usable battery will be the heaviest part of it.

There are a few companies that make backpacks for most of the radios listed above.

MANPACK: Yaesu FT-817/818ND Mobile All-Band QRP Rig

How I Made No-Box Go-Box for Backpacking, Vehicle, and Home Use

www.tothewoods.net

this is what I am looking for...similar ideas

 

[Campguy308]

FT-891 gets my vote.

 

[Alpine 338]

Operation expectations are going to dictate how small of a package you can go with. Again, the battery, and a certain degree antenna will be the part that determines how compact you can go. The link you provided I've seen before.

One thing to consider is solar (EV) recharging of the battery. A good flexible (roll up) panel and compact battery controller will add cost and weight.

Also, are you going with a single frequency tuned antenna, a multi-band antenna and/or antenna tuner?

 

[Sean the Nailer]

I'm interested/curious as to the antenna configuration, as well.

 

[uffduh]

Resurrecting the thread as I'm looking at a Yaesu FT-891 as we speak for a radio in the box. @Campguy308 do you have one and what bands are you operating on? Which antennae? Did you buy the external tuner?

 

[Campguy308]

Resurrecting the thread as I'm looking at a Yaesu FT-891 as we speak for a radio in the box. @Campguy308 do you have one and what bands are you operating on? Which antennae? Did you buy the external tuner?

Yes I have one. Great little radio. I operate on 40, 20, 17, and 10 meters. I use the wolf river coils ground mounted portable antenna. No tuner needed. I also use dipoles, again no tuner needed.

 

[uffduh]

Yes I have one. Great little radio. I operate on 40, 20, 17, and 10 meters. I use the wolf river coils ground mounted portable antenna. No tuner needed. I also use dipoles, again no tuner needed.

Thanks very much for the reply. Looks like a great little unit.

 

[Campguy308]

Thanks very much for the reply. Looks like a great little unit.

You can get them for $640 new.

 

[uffduh]

Ordered one from Gigaparts for about that.

 

[Campguy308]

Thats where i got mine. Friend just ordered from them and it was on backorder, but then shipped a couple days later.

 

[Killswitch Engage]

857D if you can find one

 

[Snowballs]

Yausu FT-817. Great little rig.

Get the larger battery pack. I added a CW filter and a LDG Z-817 auto tuner.

Lots of options for antennas including throwing a wire into a tree...

Lightweight and beats an ANPRC510 with the optional officer add on

Cheers

 

[Ravenworks]

Yausu FT-817. Great little rig.

Get the larger battery pack. I added a CW filter and a LDG Z-817 auto tuner.

Lots of options for antennas including throwing a wire into a tree...

Lightweight and beats an ANPRC510 with the optional officer add on

Cheers

This guy makes a turnkey kit for a lot if radios.
Nice stuff

Portable Zero LLC

 

[uffduh]

Some interesting accessories, for sure

 

[JTPinTX]

I use a FT-891 with a Z-11 pro tuner, and and end fed wire from the Honolulu EARC. Wire can be pulled up in a tree, or sometimes I use a Jackite 31' kite pole. I use it with a Bioenno LiFePo 20 ah battery. LiFePo batteries hold more power with much less weight than lead acid options. I have the Portable Zero bars on my radio, really like them. The 891 is a really good radio I have been very impressed with the DSP and filters on it. I use this setup for POTA.

 

[missed]

Need to come back to this one later

 

[alpine44]

857D if you can find one

I second the Yaesu FT-857D. Virtually identical form factor and weight as the FT-891 but offers UHF/VHF capabilities on a separate antenna connector. You would use UHF/VHF with a short whip during mobile ops and then hook up a longer wire antenna or the ATAS-25 to the HF output when stationary.

Killswitch's comment "if you can find one" is a reference to the desirability of these radios.

The less expensive predecessor of the FT-857D is the FT-857, which lacks the 60m band and the digital signal processing unit, which may or may not be an issue for you. I have not missed 60m and DSP so far in the field, even though I have both in my fixed base station.

All units mentioned above have a removable control head which allows you to carry the main transceiver body in the backpack and strap the control head to the arm/chest or put it in a pouch. (Yaesu's intent was for the transceiver body to be mounted in a car trunk, close to the antenna and have the control head at the dashboard.)

 

[Campguy308]

Ordered one from Gigaparts for about that.

Just wanted to check and see if you are liking the radio.

 

[uffduh]

Initial impressions are good, but haven’t had time to do much with it unfortunately.

 

[gilgsn]

Hello.

I just reviewed the Lab599 TX-500, pretty good radio, very rugged. That aside...
There are a lot of considerations regarding field HF radio communications. Here are some of them:

You biggest concern will be current-draw on receive. Some transceivers will happily gulp 1A on receive... That means the difference between three or four 18650 cells that fit in your pocket VS a car battery...
Low current means low power, but good news, you don't need more than 10W SSB with a full size antenna. The mode you choose matters as well. CW which is used to send Morse code, is the most efficient and requires the simplest and smallest radios (think pack of cigarettes). If you are willing to learn Morse code, but it is still widely used and is well worth the effort. Single-Side-Band (SSB) modes are the most efficient for voice comms. There are some amazing digital modes available now like JS8Call, capable of decoding signals 24db below noise level, but you need a computer, which means more complexity, weight, and failure points, but nothing beats those modes when it comes to performance. With CW 5W is A LOT! You can get by with a Watt using JS8Call.
I have used my PRC-320s British military manpacks on a harness, with the 2.5m whip but military HF radio are mostly used this way for local communications, and they work very well for that. For long distances though, you will want a half-wave wire with an impedance transformer of 64:1, easy to make, throw the wire in a tree, you're good to go... So if you operate on, say the 40m band, 7MHz, your antenna will be 20m or 65ft long. That holds true for a regular dipole, just feed in the middle. Now you understand why a whip antenna on a manpack doesn't work so well, at least not on the lower bands requiring long antennas. Remember, HF is 3 to 30MHz. Radio waves behave very differently depending on frequency.
One of the main questions is: What range do you want to cover? Local? Regional? Global? Regional is the hardest, the rest is easy. Anything beyond 20 miles or under 600 miles is difficult because that is in the skip zone (see skywave propagation). For regional comms, a horizontal antenna and a frequency between 3 and 7MHz will usually do the job, so the 80, 60 and 40m bands. The military favors 5MHz or so... Research "NVIS."
Unfortunately no current commercial radios make good manpacks. None are rugged enough (maybe the TX-500, which remains to be seen) and most consume way too much current. A PRC-320 consumes 175mA on receive, same as a KX2! How's that for a radio designed in the late 70s?! A good receive current draw is a maximum of 100mA for a CW radio (often 15 to 50mA) and 250mA for SSB/digital maximum... Ham radio operators often build "go-boxes" but they often end-up being as heavy as their military counterparts and way less reliable.
A group to watch are the SOTA (Summit on The Air) guys who hike mountains with radios... They often use CW for the weight savings.
So... you will need a low-current transceiver, a whip antenna you can deploy in two minutes, or even use on the move, and a full-size, resonant wire antenna... Batteries Will be Lithium Ion or Lithium Iron Phosphate cells with the appropriate battery management system, and possibly a solar panel.
For the radio, yes, the TX-500 seems very good, but it is very expensive and unproven. I'd love one but I have around 40 other radios as backups ;-) Not that anything else is even remotely spash-proof for field ops... Elecraft KX2 would be best for CW... Xiegu makes cheap (Chinese) transceivers like the G1M or G90, but QC is questionable. The Yaesu FT-818 or FT-817/817nd are still a very good choices, includes VHF and UHF, and are fairly rugged. Icom came out with the IC-705 but its large color screen uses lots of current and could easily be broken..
The Yaesus Ft-891, 857D and other 100W mobile radios do not get my vote because of excessive current draw, and you don't need that much power. Most military manpacks output around 30W, there are very good reasons for that, the maon one being, anything more is a waste in 95% of situations. Yaesu does make, or used to make a 1200 commercial (not ham) model that is as close to a military one as you can get, but the HAM market mobile modèles are not suitable (supposed to be connected to a car battery, alternator and gas engine!).
Whip antenna: Chameleon Hybrid-Micro with spike and 2.8m (or longer) whip. Wire antennas are very easy to make, even using transformers for end-fed half-waves (EFHW), so no need to buy commercial products...
Commercial transceivers: You will need a Pelican case or similar.

I'm just writing this on top of my head guys, I've been at it for ten years: Radio Prepper on YouTube.
Feel free to ask any question, I will take time to answer.
I am not associated with any brand I mentioned though Chameleon has sent me antennas to review before. I get nothing for mentioning any brand. I am probably forgetting lots of stuff, just ask...

Gil.