so ive been putting this off for way too long but after the storms last spring that knocked out power for almost a week in my area i figured it was past time to actually get serious about a proper go-kit. right now i've got a ft-891 i was planning to use as the main rig, a 40ah lifepo4 battery i picked up a few months ago, and a random wire antenna with a manual tuner. threw it all in a rubbermaid tote for now which is obviously not ideal.

what im not sure about is the ancillary stuff — like how much coax do you actually bring, do you carry a second antenna option, what about logging if the laptop dies, that kind of thing. also wondering if anyone runs a dedicated HT just for local comms while the HF setup is handling traffic or if thats overkill for most activations. i have a baofeng kicking around but honestly trust it about as far as i can throw it for anything serious.

would love to hear what people actually have in their kits vs what they thought they needed when they first built them out

the coax question is one i went back and forth on for a while. I ended up settling on two runs — a short 10ft piece for when I can set up right next to the antenna feedpoint and a 50ft run for when I can't. both PL-259 on one end and i keep a few adapters in a small ziplock. learned that lesson after showing up somewhere and realizing my connector didn't match what they had at the EOC.

on the HT thing — yes, absolutely keep one separate. your HF rig being tied up on a net doesn't mean you stop needing to talk to people 20 feet away. doesn't have to be fancy, any decent VHF/UHF handheld with a good battery and a spare programmed for local repeaters does the job. the baofeng will work in a pinch but yeah i get what you mean, i keep a wouxun as my backup and it's been solid.

one thing a lot of people forget when they first build these out — paper. a waterproof notepad and a few sharpies. if your laptop dies and your phone dies you still need to log traffic somehow. sounds obvious until it isn't.

honestly my biggest regret with my first go-kit was making it too heavy to actually want to bring anywhere lol. i went way overboard and ended up with this massive pelican case that was technically impressive but i never grabbed it when i should have because it was such a pain. eventually i split it into a grab-and-go bag with just the essentials and a secondary bin with the stuff for longer deployments.

the ft-891 is a great choice by the way, runs well on 12v and doesnt draw crazy current on receive. you might want to think about how youre charging that lifepo4 in the field too — i have a small solar panel and a dc-dc charger that lives in the kit permanently so i dont have to think about it