so ive been a ham for about 3 years now and just got my general last spring, and our local ARES group keeps talking about go-kits and being prepared and honestly i always nodded along like i knew what i was doing but i really dont have anything put together. we had a pretty bad storm roll through last month and there were a few hours where i was thinking, okay if someone actually needed me to go set up somewhere i would show up with... my HT and a prayer basically.

so i started doing some research and now im kind of overwhelmed because some people have these giant pelican cases with everything imaginable and other people say just keep it simple. my situation is i live in an apartment so i cant have a big antenna setup or anything permanent, and i drive a small car. i do have an IC-7300 at home and a Baofeng for portable stuff. was thinking maybe a budget around 3-400 dollars to start pulling things together. anyone else build one from scratch and have opinions on what actually matters vs what you think you need but dont?

oh man this was me like two years ago exactly. what helped me was stopping trying to build the perfect kit and just asking myself what do i actually need to operate for 72 hours away from home. for me that came down to a radio obviously, power, antenna, and the ability to log. everything else is nice to have.

i ended up going with a used FT-817 as my go-kit radio because its small and runs QRP which means my battery lasts way longer, but honestly for emcomm you probably want more than 5 watts so maybe look at the 857 or even something like a used IC-706. the battery situation is huge though, dont skimp on that. i run a 20ah LiFePO4 and a small solar panel, fits in a rolling carry-on bag. the antenna i use most is just a linked dipole i made myself, maybe 15 bucks in parts.

the pelican case guys are cool but a lot of that is for show honestly. a good Rubbermaid tote with foam padding works fine if youre just doing local ARES stuff. focus on being able to actually make contacts before worrying about looking professional.

Power is the thing people underestimate. You can figure out antennas on the fly and you can borrow cables, but if your battery dies two hours into a deployment you're just standing there looking useless. I'd put honestly half your budget into a decent LiFePO4 pack and a way to charge it, whether thats solar or a small generator hookup or both.

Also — and I say this as someone who showed up to an actual activation without it — a laminated copy of your frequencies, your served agency contact info, and your ICS forms. Sounds dumb but when everything is chaotic you do not want to be digging through your phone trying to find the repeater input. Print it out, laminate it, zip tie it inside the lid of your kit. Took me one embarrassing afternoon to learn that one.