so i've been licensed for about two years now and kept telling myself i'd put together a proper go-kit for emergencies but just never got around to it. well after the storms we had last month knocked out power for three days in our county i figured i really need to get my act together on this.

right now i have a Yaesu FT-891 that i use at home and a Baofeng that i mostly just carry around and forget to charge. i know the Baofeng isnt exactly a serious emcomm radio but its what i got for now. my question is really about the whole kit itself — like do i build around a single bag, a pelican case, multiple smaller bags? i see people online with these incredibly elaborate setups and it kind of feels overwhelming. i dont know if i should be thinking about HF capability or just focus on VHF/UHF for local ARES stuff first. also power is a whole thing i havent even figured out yet — battery, solar, what size... anyway figured i'd ask here before i go down a rabbit hole of youtube videos for three hours

oh man i went through exactly this about four years ago and yeah it can feel like a lot. honestly the best advice i ever got was to start with the mission not the gear. like what are you actually going to be doing with this kit? if your county ARES does mostly shelter support and local repeater stuff then yeah, VHF/UHF first makes total sense, you dont need to drag an HF setup to a community center. if you want to do more serious emergency traffic or backup communication for something like RACES or winlink then HF starts to matter.

for the physical kit i started with a rolling duffle and honestly still use it. pelican cases look great but they're heavy even before you put anything in them. i'd say get one decent portable radio sorted first, get a 20-30 ah lithium battery like a bioenno or similar, and a small solar panel you can actually test before you need it. then just practice — like actually set the thing up in your backyard and run it for a few hours. you'll figure out real fast what you forgot to pack.

the baofeng is fine for getting started dont let anyone tell you otherwise, i know plenty of people who use them for simplex during events and they work. the charging thing is the real issue though — lithium AAs and a spare battery pack go a long way toward solving that problem for field use.

one thing i'd add that nobody told me when i started building my kit — document everything. write down your frequencies, your ARES net schedules, your county EOC contact info, all of it on actual paper and laminate it or stick it in a little folder in your bag. when its 2am and things are chaotic you do not want to be digging through your phone trying to find the local simplex frequency. learned that one the hard way during a deployment a couple years back. the radio stuff almost always works out, its the little logistics things that trip you up.