Anyone here have a clue on which pins on the 6 pin connector are Rxd and Txd? No info on the internet nor the FB group. Those who know manufacture the cables and will not share.
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TCA PRC-152a forums, user groups?
- Thread starter wb4sqi
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Anyone here have a clue on which pins on the 6 pin connector are Rxd and Txd? No info on the internet nor the FB group. Those who know manufacture the cables and will not share.
rescuecomm
Member
There is some info on the DEVTSIX site that may be of some assistance.
Been there, AR15.com and steelsoldiers.com, none were helpful. There are guys on the facebook group that have the information but do no want to share it for some reason.
MY chinese programming cable will be here on Tuesday, if I can get it apart I'll know and share the info.
rescuecomm
Member
WB4SQI
Have you seen the recently released TRI-152 with the KDU? It appears that the airsoft community is still driving additional accessories.
Have you seen the recently released TRI-152 with the KDU? It appears that the airsoft community is still driving additional accessories.
Yep, saw that this morning, nice package. I've gone overboard and picked up a TCA PRC-148 also. I can now program both the PRC-152 and 148 by PC. Both are neat but heavy radios to pack around.
rescuecomm
Member
Definitely a price to pay for enhanced durability and long battery life. Does the TCA-148 have zones? Can either radio be programmed to recieve VHF but transmit UHF on the same channel?
gtaman
Member
I just noticed they have a lot of new models. The PRC 152H does (25-30/Air/VHF/UHF) and a 15W model that does (AIR/VHF/UHF 200/300/400. I feel like they can do UHF satcom now. Uh oh
rescuecomm
Member
Looking at the seller's page, the transmit power on 220 and 330 is one watt. Probably FM modulation too, so of dubious utility in most cases. People in the know say the H version is vaporware now unless there are new developments. tBack in the 1980's, the RACES group I worked with used 220 because we didn't get desensed when a 110 watt VHF mobile keyed up nearby. Only a couple of those repeaters exist today. Interesting information anyway.
I have not tried that, sort of doubtful if it will cross band on a single channel.
rescuecomm
Member
The lowly and much reviled Baofeng UV82 variants will do it. Presumably if you enter the transmit as a frequency rather than a preset offset value, it will work. If the TRI can monitor VHF and UHF at the same time, it would work a crossband repeater in the correct manner.
Both the TCA 148 and 152 have a repeater function in the menu but I have not explored that feature. They may indeed cross band repeat.
I worked for Thales in the early 2000s. One of our employees was deployed to Iraq to aid in repairs of AN/PRC-148. He was in an open air market in the civilian area near the base and found a local who had 6 MBITs he was trying to sell. There is a feature with that radio that allows you to cable a pair of them to make a cross-band repeater. Our forces would sometimes take a pair of MBITRs and put them in a high location to make this kind of fast deploy repeater. The locals would sometime find and steal them. These units still had keys in them. He bought the lot of them from the guy and took them back to the base. Who knows how many units were lost this way and got into the hands of adversaries.
The PRC-77s had a similar repeater function.
As a side question (but not a new thread), it was mentioned that the user interface of the real vs non-real ones is different, does anyone have (or know of) a good simulator for the operation of the real ones, if I understand it correctly, the operations of the PRC 117 and 152 are similar (if not identical) to each other.
Thanks
Joel
Makes sense. Those are both Harris units. The HMS program that produced the JEM MBITR, PRC-154 and PRC-155 were built by a team made up of General Dynamics (formerly the Motorola division in Scottsdale, AZ) Thales, BAE and Rockwell Collins. The rifleman handheld and the manpack units shared some common software elements in the HMI (human machine interface) part of the design as well as other parts. Obviously, there had to be compatibility within the waveform management parts of the boxes.
Our rep over there commented on how much the troops in the field valued their MBITs. It was hard to get them to give one up, even if it had problems, unless you could hand them a replacement in short order. He said the only things they seemed to value more was their canteen and their rifle.
I have never had a chance to use one of the MBITR knockoffs so I cannot say anything about the HMI in their units. I can tell you that A LOT of time and effort was devoted to the HMI part of PRC-148, PRC-154 and PRC-155. I have personally used both the 148 and the 155 in field testing and trials. They are intuitive in the way the menus are organized. There are not a lot of buttons on the HMI so you have to some smarts in its operation or people won't want to use it. The only simulator I ever saw was for automated testing of the PRC-155. It allowed batch commands to be entered into the radio based on a script that ran on the test control computer. It replace the little front HMI box that was mounted on the radio. That simulator would never be something you would find outside of a test lab. I never saw anything like that for the handheld radios.
I was actually meaning a simulator like for the old GPS system that was very difficult to use (PLGRS), (I haven't seen this in the past 20 years though).
I guess someone got fed up and wrote a program to let people play around and figure out how to use the PLGRS.
If it was an aircraft we would call it a part task trainer which would simulate (on a computer screen) the buttons and how the equipment would respond.
Thanks
Joel
I guess someone got fed up and wrote a program to let people play around and figure out how to use the PLGRS.
If it was an aircraft we would call it a part task trainer which would simulate (on a computer screen) the buttons and how the equipment would respond.
Thanks
Joel
Joel,
Not aware of any training simulators for these radios but I wouldn't be surprised if somebody has come up with one.
I agree, the PLGRS were difficult to use at best. The DAGRS are somewhat easier to use and a whole lot smaller. Spent some time working at Rockwell Collins and had a chance to use the DAGRs when we had to test the HMS manpack radios on certain waveforms. Rockwell/UTC/Raytheon or whoever they are this week has a whole variety of GPS products based off of their DAGR technology. Cool stuff.
It's the waveform technology that makes these new military software defined radios so incredible. I have to laugh at these Chinese knockoff radios that are being sold. I'm sure they are probably just simple narrow FM transceivers. I doubt if they can even work on any of the Amateur modes like DSTAR or even P-25 let alone any of the "exotic" ones like SINCGARS, MUOS or SRW.
rescuecomm
Member
Not for $300.00!
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