so ive been a ham for about three years now and honestly embarrassed to admit i still dont have a proper go-kit put together. every time there's a weather event or something i end up scrambling around the shack grabbing stuff and its a mess. finally decided to actually do this right.

i have a yaesu ft-857d that i was thinking of using as the main rig since it does hf/vhf/uhf all in one, but i also have a couple of baofengs and an ic-2300h just sitting around. was thinking of building the kit around the 857 but man that thing eats power. wondering if anyone else went through this same decision process.

also not sure what to do about power. i have a 35ah AGM battery i picked up at a battery store a while back but never really tested it under load for any length of time. do most people just run straight off a deep cycle or does everyone have some kind of solar panel situation going on too.

anyway would love to hear what people actually have in their kits vs what they thought they needed when they started building it out

good that you're finally doing this, better late than never honestly. I went through the exact same thing with the rig choice and ended up pulling the 857 out of my go-kit after the first couple of activations. great radio but you're right about the power draw, especially if you're running it anywhere near full power on HF. ended up going with an ic-7100 for a while and now mostly use an xiegu g90 for the HF side of things. lighter, way more efficient, does everything i actually need in the field.

for power i run a 40ah lithium battery now but started with a sealed lead acid similar to what you have. the SLA is fine, just heavy. definitely put a load on it and see how long it actually lasts before you need it for real. nothing worse than finding out your battery is half dead at 2am during an actual event.

one thing nobody told me when i was building mine out -- dont forget the non-radio stuff. feedline, connectors, a roll of electrical tape, small multimeter, headlamp, logbook and pencil. i showed up to my first ARES activation with a beautiful radio setup and no way to write anything down. felt like an idiot.

yeah the 857 is kind of overkill for most go-kit stuff depending on what you're actually doing with it. if you're doing emcomm and mostly sitting on a repeater or doing packet you could honestly get away with way less radio. i keep a second smaller kit with just an ft-60 and a slim jim antenna rolled up and that covers probably 80% of what i actually get called out for.

the battery question is a whole thing lol. i have solar but rarely use it unless im out more than a day. for a weekend deployment the 35ah should be plenty if you're not transmitting constantly. just watch your receive current too, people forget the radio is still drawing power just sitting there listening.