Hello.
I just reviewed the Lab599 TX-500, pretty good radio, very rugged. That aside...
There are a lot of considerations regarding field HF radio communications. Here are some of them:
You biggest concern will be current-draw on receive. Some transceivers will happily gulp 1A on receive... That means the difference between three or four 18650 cells that fit in your pocket VS a car battery...
Low current means low power, but good news, you don't need more than 10W SSB with a full size antenna. The mode you choose matters as well. CW which is used to send Morse code, is the most efficient and requires the simplest and smallest radios (think pack of cigarettes). If you are willing to learn Morse code, but it is still widely used and is well worth the effort. Single-Side-Band (SSB) modes are the most efficient for voice comms. There are some amazing digital modes available now like JS8Call, capable of decoding signals 24db below noise level, but you need a computer, which means more complexity, weight, and failure points, but nothing beats those modes when it comes to performance. With CW 5W is A LOT! You can get by with a Watt using JS8Call.
I have used my PRC-320s British military manpacks on a harness, with the 2.5m whip but military HF radio are mostly used this way for local communications, and they work very well for that. For long distances though, you will want a half-wave wire with an impedance transformer of 64:1, easy to make, throw the wire in a tree, you're good to go... So if you operate on, say the 40m band, 7MHz, your antenna will be 20m or 65ft long. That holds true for a regular dipole, just feed in the middle. Now you understand why a whip antenna on a manpack doesn't work so well, at least not on the lower bands requiring long antennas. Remember, HF is 3 to 30MHz. Radio waves behave very differently depending on frequency.
One of the main questions is: What range do you want to cover? Local? Regional? Global? Regional is the hardest, the rest is easy. Anything beyond 20 miles or under 600 miles is difficult because that is in the skip zone (see skywave propagation). For regional comms, a horizontal antenna and a frequency between 3 and 7MHz will usually do the job, so the 80, 60 and 40m bands. The military favors 5MHz or so... Research "NVIS."
Unfortunately no current commercial radios make good manpacks. None are rugged enough (maybe the TX-500, which remains to be seen) and most consume way too much current. A PRC-320 consumes 175mA on receive, same as a KX2! How's that for a radio designed in the late 70s?! A good receive current draw is a maximum of 100mA for a CW radio (often 15 to 50mA) and 250mA for SSB/digital maximum... Ham radio operators often build "go-boxes" but they often end-up being as heavy as their military counterparts and way less reliable.
A group to watch are the SOTA (Summit on The Air) guys who hike mountains with radios... They often use CW for the weight savings.
So... you will need a low-current transceiver, a whip antenna you can deploy in two minutes, or even use on the move, and a full-size, resonant wire antenna... Batteries Will be Lithium Ion or Lithium Iron Phosphate cells with the appropriate battery management system, and possibly a solar panel.
For the radio, yes, the TX-500 seems very good, but it is very expensive and unproven. I'd love one but I have around 40 other radios as backups ;-) Not that anything else is even remotely spash-proof for field ops... Elecraft KX2 would be best for CW... Xiegu makes cheap (Chinese) transceivers like the G1M or G90, but QC is questionable. The Yaesu FT-818 or FT-817/817nd are still a very good choices, includes VHF and UHF, and are fairly rugged. Icom came out with the IC-705 but its large color screen uses lots of current and could easily be broken..
The Yaesus Ft-891, 857D and other 100W mobile radios do not get my vote because of excessive current draw, and you don't need that much power. Most military manpacks output around 30W, there are very good reasons for that, the maon one being, anything more is a waste in 95% of situations. Yaesu does make, or used to make a 1200 commercial (not ham) model that is as close to a military one as you can get, but the HAM market mobile modèles are not suitable (supposed to be connected to a car battery, alternator and gas engine!).
Whip antenna: Chameleon Hybrid-Micro with spike and 2.8m (or longer) whip. Wire antennas are very easy to make, even using transformers for end-fed half-waves (EFHW), so no need to buy commercial products...
Commercial transceivers: You will need a Pelican case or similar.
I'm just writing this on top of my head guys, I've been at it for ten years: Radio Prepper on YouTube.
Feel free to ask any question, I will take time to answer.
I am not associated with any brand I mentioned though Chameleon has sent me antennas to review before. I get nothing for mentioning any brand. I am probably forgetting lots of stuff, just ask...
Gil.