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"Ground Control to Major Tom, your circuit's dead, there's something wrong. Can you hear me, Major Tom?..."
Ever wanted to shout "Fire team, fire team! we've got a heavy contact over here and we're taking rounds like crazy, the place looks like Swiss cheese, how about some help!"? Well so have I.
Anyway, after the lecture on "Why Requesting An Airstrike Is Not How We Fix Customers' Problems Over The Phone", I decided it might be best to get a radio and keep this sort of thing to airsoft.
Radio comms are great fun, and can give you the edge. Whilst not a substitute for decent planning, they do let you inform people of situations on the move and get orders for unforeseen circumstances. Of course, it doesn't always work like that, most of the time you just hear vague screams and sounds of gunfire, but we figured that's better than nothing. When it does come together, it's useful. Patrol teams can report contacts and ask if they should engage or remain undetected, areas can ask for reinforcements and attacks can be launched simultaneously without the need for synchronising watches.
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Here we can see the Multicom Pro PMR446. Not the cheapest of choices, but it does come with a few more features than most. These include:
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The DCS codes are a nice addition, as most people use the standard CTCSS ones. This means that it's quite hard to spoof your calls, as they are unlikely to be able to transmit with the correct code, thus your radios ignore them. They can still listen in on you by scanning open channels, but the voice inversion scrambling deals with that one fairly well.
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As you will also see, I have a headset for it, which involves a lot of wiring. The headset itself uses a metal hoop to hold the mic securely onto your head, and it works well. No amount of running, crawling or diving has dislodged it so far. I had to have this headset specially made by Lowe Electronics, as most accessories aren't compatible with my radio (despite the jacks fitting okay). They made it and delivered it in three days. Well worth a look if you can't find something for yours. On the right hand side of the picture you can see the jack end that goes into the radio. This then goes up to a clip on PTT (push to talk) button that clips onto your clothing. From there, it goes to a headset with boom mike and also to a dovetail connector. |
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The connector allows you to connect a remote PTT. In this case I've chosen to go for a ring mounted one, that sits on your finger, but I could have equally connected a large body mounted PTT that can be keyed with an elbow. I really like the ring PTT as I can keep both hands on my weapon and still communicate with the rest of the team. Much better than fumbling around in gloves trying to find a small mobile phone style mic and PTT button.
So that's my radio, but what about radios in general that are suitable for skirmishing? As luck would have it, Roger Stenning, AKA Redcap, has written a few pages on what's out there and how best to use it. Even more fortunately, he's given me permission to reproduce it here. It should be fairly obvious by the new window, colour scheme and About The Author information that Roger wrote this and not myself, but I thought I'd reiterate it nonetheless. The pages and any errors have been copied across verbatim apart from some minor alterations required to get them to work properly with this site. Don't sue me Redcap. ;)
Radio Communications and Airsoft.