so ive been a ham for about 3 years now and keep telling myself ill get a proper go-kit together and just... never do. well after the storms we had last month knocked out power for 4 days i figured i really need to stop procrastinating on this. our local ARES group has been bugging me about it too.

right now i basically have nothing organized. my HF rig is a Yaesu FT-891 that i run at home off a linear supply, and i have a cheap BaoFeng UV-5R for VHF/UHF which i know isnt ideal but it works. i do have a deep cycle marine battery in the garage that i use for camping sometimes. so thats something i guess.

my question is really like, where do you even start? do i get a big Pelican case and cram everything in or is there a better way to organize it. i saw somebody at a hamfest with this really slick setup in a wheeled toolbox from Home Depot and it looked amazing but i dont know if that was overkill or what. also what do people actually bring for antennas in a go situation, i have an EFHW that works great at home but its a pain to deploy. just kind of feeling overwhelmed by the whole thing and wanted to hear how other people approached this.

oh man i went through exactly this about two years ago and the biggest thing i can tell you is dont try to build the perfect kit on day one. i started with a cheap plastic tote from walmart, just got the essentials in there and made myself actually deploy it a few times in the backyard. you learn real fast what you forgot when youre standing in a parking lot at 6am trying to remember where you packed your coax adapters.

for your situation the FT-891 is actually a solid choice for a go-kit, runs fine off 12v direct so that marine battery will work great. i would grab an anderson powerpole distribution block if you dont have one, makes connecting everything so much cleaner. and yeah get yourself some powerpole connectors on everything before you need them, not the night before a deployment.

for antennas i personally went with a linked dipole that i can put up with a painters pole or throw into a tree. the EFHW is fine but you're right that they can be fiddly. maybe just keep it as a backup and grab something simpler for quick deployment. the Home Depot toolbox thing is totally legit btw, a lot of the serious ARES guys around here use those and theyre way cheaper than Pelican cases. just dont go too crazy until you know what you actually need.

I'm kind of in a similar boat so watching this thread. One thing I did read somewhere was to think about how long you'd actually be deployed — like an overnight shelter activation is totally different from a week-long event. That changed how I was thinking about battery capacity at least.