Have you guys ever seen or used British Clansman radios? These are marvelously designed and built radio systems. There are no tubes in them. It is true that a military radio is not for everyone but if you are a ham and want point to point communications, the Clansman series will work just fine. If you are not a ham then you are stuck with CB and FRS (cell phone, etc) anyway, and those don't have CTCSS, repeater offset, and all the other bells and whistles either. Any service through a repeater, including cell phones, is not a good back country/expedition choice.
I personally have Clansman PRC-320 HF sets available for 3 vehicles, plus a portable '320 setup, and several VHF PRC-351/352 (with 20W amps) vehicular and portable. Portable to me is luggable to a tailgate, flat rock, or camp table. No way you'd want to carry one of these far.
The '320 covers continuously from 2 MHz to 30 MHz, USB (not LSB as stated above), AM (as in CB), covers all the HF bands including the Alaska bush emergency frequency, the new 60 meter band no problem, wide and narrow CW, built in antenna tuner, stable as a rock, waterproof, shock resistant, all functions settable by feel even if you have to reach behind the seat. You could drive tent pegs with one and not hurt it. BTW, there are nets every night on 75 and 40 meters where USB is the standard.
The PRC-351 is my favorite VHF set for point to point comms. Leave them out in the rain ans dust no problem. It's small-ish, 4 W out, has a clip-on 20W amp available, and is narrow FM compatible with ham transceivers. These VHF sets do cover 6 meters and IMHO that's better than 2m or 70cm for coverage on simplex. No repeater use, that's correct, but my use is for convoy and camping where simplex is the way to go anyway. Even here in the East there are never repeaters when we need them. If I need long distance coverage I go HF.
As for age, the Clansman series just came out of service. It's the latest readily available military equipment. Can't buy US stuff anymore. Much of it was made in the 80's and 90's. If you troubleshoot and work on your own radios then you will appreciate the lack of computers. As for accessories, there are heavy and light weight headsets, handsets, speaker-mikes, and remote handsets available. Lots of antenna options from short whips to long whips to wire antennas for camp. 24vdc power is required but there is a 14v DCCU that takes your vehicles 12 to 14 or so voltage and converts it to 24-28 v to charge the battery on the Clansman. I use that setup in my Dodge 2500. There's even a hand-cranked generator if you like torture.
As I said in the beginning, these are not for everyone. If you buy your ham radios based on number of knobs and layers of menu items, you'll probably not like military radios. Personally I'd rather lug around a mil packset with complete PRC-320 (battery to antenna) than to fool with all the parts and pieces to use my FT-857D.
Bob WB4ETT
