so ive been a ham for about 3 years now and keep telling myself im going to build a proper go-kit and then never actually do it. after the storms we had last month knocked out power for almost 4 days i figured it was time to stop procrastinating. the thing is i dont really know what the "right" setup looks like and theres so much conflicting advice out there.

right now i have a Yaesu FT-857D that i use for HF and a cheap Baofeng that i mostly just use for the local 2m repeater. i was thinking about building the kit around the 857 since it does everything but man that radio eats current and i dont have a great battery solution figured out yet. someone at the club mentioned a 40ah LiFePO4 battery but those arent exactly cheap either.

i guess my main question is — for those of you who actually have go-kits that youve deployed or at least tested in the field, what do you wish you had included that you didnt think of, and what stuff did you pack that turned out to be totally unnecessary? also curious how you handle power since thats the part im most confused about.

oh man the power question is the big one and honestly it took me a couple of deployments to really figure out what works. i run a 50ah LiFePO4 now with a small 100w solar panel and a Victron charge controller and that setup has kept me going through some pretty long activations. the upfront cost hurts but when youre sitting there on hour 14 of a deployment and the battery is still at 70% you really appreciate it.

one thing i totally underestimated when i built my first kit was feedline and antenna stuff. i had the radio, i had the battery, but i showed up to a site and realized my coax was too short and i didnt have the right adapters. now i keep a small ziplock bag with a handful of PL-259 adapters, a couple BNC to SO-239 things, some electrical tape, and a spare length of RG-8X. sounds obvious but when youre stressed and its raining its not obvious at all.

also honestly dont overlook a simple notepad and pencil. logs, frequencies, whatever. electronics fail. paper doesnt.

the 857 is a solid choice but yeah the current draw is real, like 20 amps on transmit if youre running full power. for a go-kit a lot of people actually drop down to a dedicated VHF/UHF radio for local emcomm stuff and save the HF rig for when you really need it. depends on what nets you're actually expected to support i guess.

im still pretty new to the emcomm side myself but what my elmer told me was to start simple — get one thing working reliably before you add complexity. so like just get a radio, a battery, and a way to charge the battery sorted out first, then worry about the fancy stuff later. i spent like two months researching antenna options before i even tested whether my basic setup actually worked, which in retrospect was backwards lol