"US Army radio operator" Topic

Nicely painted figure from Gringos40. He really does look like a chap who has been carrying a weight for hours in the tropical heat and humidity. Wonder what those things do weigh? In addition to "The Things They Carried"

Going by the memory, typical backpack radio carried by US forces in Vietnam would be around 10 kg. Additionally, it might be a good idea to pack one or two spare batteries (maybe 1 kg each, probably tricky to fit into webbing pockets) and a spare antenna (pretty light).

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Really good!

Armand

The an/prc25 radio weighed about 24 pounds,not counting
the packboard if used or extra batteries. What surprises
me is that most figures produced now show the long antenna
instead of the short one which was more commonly used and
less obvious for the Viets to target. Drawback was shorter
range. This was the radio used by both the Marine Corps and
Army.

Liam, really nice work.

Agreed. Quality work.

Does seem like an odd way to be carrying the M16 though. You would think he'd either have it slung or holding it at ready.

Beautifully painted and the sculpting is expressive and believable. Great all around.

I was the radioman for my Platoon for awhile in the early 70's carrying the PRC-24. I almost always used the tape antenna as we only needed to talk to Company or other Platoons which were never more than a few hundred yards away. In really poor conditions we could relay for each other. The Company Commander would have a larger and better radio, sometimes in a jeep.

You got the uniform faded color right and the helmet is much better. The boots look great too. I think this is the best one you've done. However, the antenna. The long segmented fiberglass whip antenna could not bend like that unless if was in a hurricane.

Ideally, you put the radio in your backpack and wrap the tape antenna around your helmet to conceal it the best you can. When you halt for a long period you might put on the whip antenna.

Wolfhag

The painting is great, but it is way beyond my capabilities. Ged is not savvy as to posting on TMP, so I do it for him. I am sure he will tell us who was the artist here. I am but a voice crying out in the wilderness.

I have a collection of long awaited ARVN to do, but have been totally distracted by 2eme DB AFVs in 1944 France (20mm scale) and a massive need for Prussian and latterly French cavalry figures for Waterloo Remodelled (1/72)

thank for all the comments chaps the actual figure was
painted by Andy Singleton.Wolfhag fascinating information about the antenna..a valuble lesson in one sentance! i never
knew you could wrap around the tape antenna in that fashion.

regards
Ged
gringo40s.com

Keep going with the good work my dear friend…

Armand

thank you Armand as ever amigo!!

!!!!!
best regards Ged
gringo40s.com

I did like Bismarck's comment about the massive antenna shown by most producers. I thought it could be and was folded over generally, failing to appreciate that applied to a tape antenna, so thanks Wolfhag also.

Again, great painting job.

The PRC-25 is a smaller version of the WWII SCR-300 the first real "walkie talkie". The hand held Hollywood walkie talkie was actually called a "handy talkie".

My personal experience with the PRC-25 (Prick 25) was I didn't like the whip antenna or the back board. If deployed while walking the whip antenna it would pull you in a different direction than you wanted to go and got hung up in the woods. Once it almost made me lose my balance and fall off a mountain trail.

The back board was more comfortable when walking but when you stopped it was a pain to get into a comfortable position to take a snooze which was always a priority when stopping. I put the radio in my back pack and had an Army butt pack to carry my other gear and batteries in. From my experience the batteries were terrible, you never really knew how long they would last.

The short range of the PRC-25 never really bothered me. If you could not be in contact by radio with the platoon on your flanks or company hq it was a potentially very bad situation and I'd alert the LT. Because either some one was lost and there was a gap between us, not a good thing.

We had an FO with his own radio and the CO had a better radio to reach battalion and above. I didn't have to worry about any of that unless leading a patrol.

Unfortunately, the new radios like the AN/PRC-177 you can't hide the antennas. They need to be deployed for SAT COM or listening in to local cell phone traffic. On one occasion while patrolling in a town a woman came up to my son and put a flower in his plate carrier marking him as a target. His terp saving his life on more than one occasion as he could listen in to the bad guys on cell phone traffic coordinating an ambush. He said he had three antennas shot off his radio.

If you are doing VN scenarios there is always a good chance the bad guys have a PRC-25 radio and are listening in.

Wolfhag

Always something interesting and useful from you Wolfhag…..VC/NVA eavesdropping is now going become a potential feature for our games.

ugly,
Yes, they had quite a few PRC-25's to listen in on.

Something you can put into your game is the NVA listening in when an air strike is being called in. The planes will ask the friendly unit to pop a certain color smoke to ID them as friendly. The NVA would also have smoke grenades and pop the color requested to ID them as the friendly units. But that can backfire on them too.

Wolfhag

Great potential!

Details I found (not my personal experience):
How the enemy could screw with us via radio: As mentioned previously, all the enemy needed was the frequency—not the actual radio—for the purpose of screwing with troops.

Jamming was very common, not only by our enemy, but also by friendly troops walking over another's transmission. Line of sight—FM—communications was simplex meaning that unlike a telephone, two radios within range of each other could not transmit at the same time. Depending upon the strength of the signal, when two or more radios try to talk at the same time, you would hear a loud squeal. So, if the enemy were pretty much in a position that they were bound and determined to defend, if they knew your frequency, all they had to do was to hold their push-to-talk button down, and air support would hear a long squeal. A defense against that would be to go to an alternate frequency.

When using air support, such as helicopter or air strike it was common for friendlies to mark their area with colored smoke. Okay, so you are directing support. You tell the pilot—or the pilot tells you—to mark you line with smoke. This is Scratcher, I popped red smoke—I say again—red smoke. So, the bad guys hear this, so you pop red, and they pop red, and the pilot lets you know that he does not have a clue which is which. As a result, it became SOP to pop the smoke, then have the pilot identify the colors.

There is an old story handed down from the early days where a friendly was marking their position with smoke, each time telling the pilot which color was friendly. Each time the enemy copied the color popped. By the third time, the patrol leader called out that he popped green smoke. But, this time he popped a different color—not green. At which time the sergeant yelled through the radio "Fire on the green smoke! I say again! Fire on the green smoke!" I have no doubt that that story is true!

From that lesson we learned that it was best to pop smoke and let the pilot say what color he saw in order to positively identify friendlies. In thick vegetation, smoke was not always a good option because the smoke would filter through the double and triple canopies.

Wolfhag

I read in one book or other a very similar story – the PAVN/NLF were listening in and using captured smoke grenades to confuse the pilots – it got to the point that the controller on the ground asked the pilot what colour he could see and when he said every colour the guy on the ground said they hadn't thrown any smoke and to hit them all.

Can't remember where I read that story but it has the ring of truth about it.

There was also something about having an agreed number and to give a smaller number and the other party gave the number to add up to the agreed number, say it was 9 and the pilots said 4 you had to reply with 5. It seemed to me an astute enemy could figure that out but it also occurs to me that few Vietnamese can say the single digits correctly – 3 becomes tree, 4 = foe, 5 = fi, 6 = sick 7 = seben, 8 = 'a' 9= nigh….so perhaps it was an easy, grunt proof code that at least helped some…

What a great feedback this generated. I find such carefully thought out systems fascinating, even more so when they fail.

Pearl Harbour and switch off the radar. It is Sunday morning and this is new kit anyway.

My experience (decades ago now) was folk coming into the OR. How often the staff would ask "Are you Mr So and So?" and the poor deaf old boy would say "Yes", instead of "Tell me your name"…………….

Glad to help out.

There was also a crypto version of the PRC-25 that was used in VN.

link

However, I don't think the early voice encryption and frequency hopping were completely reliable.
link

Wolfhag