One of the most effective weapons on the battlefield is communications. Radio communications in the civilian world is steadily becoming an anachronistic pastime of a few middle aged men. Most people use cell phones or email to communicate and even my 97 year old grandmother uses "facetime" app to interact with grandkids. How then, in an emergency or crisis, do you contact family or friends when power is out for days or travel is restricted? It only takes a couple of cell towers being knocked out or a fire at the local cable company's receiver station to cripple local networks. Could you imagine what would happen to an American city without cell coverage or Netflix streaming? One thing I have reluctantly and painfully learned from getting into short range radio communications is new vs. used vs. costs. Every time I think I've found a good deal on a used set of Motorola handhelds or ICOM radios, it usually flops. Batteries are bad, boards are damaged, hand mikes or PTT not working correctly. You need reliable comms all the time, things will go wrong on their own without a head start. One of the primary reasons for comms is for tactical not strategic uses, so light weight and portable is the key. I think I found a good compromise in the PRC-152. The TCA runs from $250-300 dollars new, but ships from China and takes from 1-2 months to arrive. Extended antenna are sold separately as are external handmikes and pouches. There are quite a number of GI mikes and pouches for good prices on the secondary market. Stay away from surplus Peltor headsets and Chinese knockoff ones as well. I bought a knockoff one and it was defective right out of the box and I was told by the manufacturer there was nothing wrong with it (radio volume was so low as to be unintelligible). At $100 it wasn't too bad of a hit as a set of surplus Peltor cost over $300 and it had loud static when the volume was turned over halfway up. I should have just paid for a new Peltor xpi or Comtac III and been done with it. So far the radio's range has been about three miles in the city and rural area without any issues other than the extended antenna being annoying. I haven't tried loading comsec yet as I'm still teaching the other operator proper radio telephone operations ie. phonic alphabet, short concise transmissions, and coded verbiage.
Harris obviously makes good gear...The best thing about these radios would be how rugged and reliable they are. I see they put out 5 watts and are 30-520 Mhz. What vendor did you use to purchase your PRC-152's, did you go direct to Harris? Also, what are you using to program them, did it come with an application? What about civilian encryption?
Seems to be what I was looking for back when I decided on my Kenwood TM-D720a/TH-72 as our family Comm Systems… The Kenwoods are FM Analog only, and do not cover all the frequency bands that the PRC-152 does, but were OFF the Shelf units, available at the time, and they have 1000 Programmable Channels… If I was younger, and starting over, these would be my choice, of a Comm System… Fully Programmable, in Mode, Modulation, Rf Power, and with the Mobil Mount/Amplifiers make mobile operation available as well as Jerk & Operate Portable Operation.. The biggest drawback I see is the limited Presets available, (99) without a Laptop Programming Package, when changes of presets are required, in the field…
@BTPost "...The biggest drawback I see is...without a Laptop Programming Package..." But, I know there must be one as I've seen military guys use it numerous times. I'm just wondering if it's cost prohibited or only for the government or...? Concerning encryption, the spec sheet does say 'ASC (Type 1 & 3)' so it might be possible to actually encrypt one's transmission but think you will need a load/fill device, like a KYK-13, also to do it...maybe, or Harris has a software module. One of the reasons I got into DMR radio was the encryption capability inherit to use AES 256 encryption in case the balloon goes up. My home station is an Anytone AT-D578UV Pro with a pair of AT-878 handhelds, nice radios, no complaints and while AES 256 won't stop the g-men it will most definitely stop the bad guys(Leftist Fascists) or really slow them down because as far as I know AES 256 hasn't been broken and won't be without some serious computer power and knowledge. I am sure the government has or could but of course they wouldn't announce it either.
Then what you need is to Double Encrypt your Printed Digital Comms, by first sending it thru a OneTime Pad, then thru the 256 AES Encryption built into the Radio… Then you can watch them scramble their collective Brains Out, trying to figure out what you are up to… Works every time… It was a common method of causing chaos in decryption groups, by also sending completely useless messages that the breakers would spend many hours trying to crack, in between the real messages…
Similar to what the Japanese did prior to Pearl Harbor, and Midway… Sent lots of useless, and meaningless, messages through out the pacific, to cause the US Codebreakers to think that they had either changed their code, or mislead as to their objective…
I'm pretty sure those PRC-152s you get from China are knock offs and do not have the same frequency range or encryption as a real PRC-152. I looked into them one time and decided on the TYT UV390 instead.
One thing to NOTE here: A couple of GIANT differences between the AN/PRC-152c and all these other Chinese Digital/Analog Dualband Radios IS, that the PRC-152c will cover the Aircraft AM band (108-136Mhz) Tx/Rx, as well as LowVhf Bands, (30-108Mhz) in ALL MODEs… The PRC-152 can also be setup to do APCO-25 which is the US DIGITAL Standard for Public Safety Comms, here… on any of the US Frequency bands between 30 & 511 Mhz…
I think BenP is right. If you bought those prc new for only 250-300 from china you got ripped off. They are simply baofeng boards put inside a fake plastic case to look military like. The Paintball players and mil play players use these because they cant afford a real Harris Radio. This is not a real Harris radio I promise you. Used to work for Motorola and seen my fair share of Harris stuff brought to our shop. You wont get Harris that cheap even Chinese knockoffs.
