so ive been a ham for about 3 years now, mostly just doing local repeater stuff and a little HF on weekends, but after watching what happened with the storms last spring I started thinking I really need to get my emergency kit sorted out properly. like actually usable, not just a pile of stuff in a bag.

right now I have a Yaesu FT-60 and a little Baofeng as backup, a 12ah LiFePO4 battery, some coax, and a roll-up J-pole I made from ladder line. stuffed most of it in a backpack but honestly its kind of a mess in there and I wouldnt want to try setting it up in the dark under pressure.

I guess my question is more about the organization side of things — do you guys use hard cases, those pelican type things, or just good bags? and is there stuff I keep forgetting that you only figure out after you actually deploy somewhere? I feel like theres always that one thing you left out.

also not sure if I should bother with HF capability in the go kit or if thats overkill for most ARES activations. my county group mostly does VHF/UHF stuff but I dunno

the thing nobody tells you until you show up somewhere and feel like an idiot — adapters. bring every kind of PL-259, BNC, SMA adapter combo you can think of because I guarantee at some point youre going to need to connect two things that were never meant to talk to each other. I have a little ziplock just full of them and it has saved me more times than I can count.

on the case question, I went with a Nanuk 935 and I dont regret it. yeah its heavier than a bag but everything has a spot and I can actually find stuff when its 2am and raining. cut foam inserts take forever but once its done its done. a good bag works too honestly, some guys on our ARES team use those 5.11 bags and they swear by them, just depends how much abuse your kit is gonna take.

for HF — I'd say yes eventually, even just a simple end fed and a little QRP rig tucked in. there have been a couple situations where local repeaters went down and suddenly everyone wished they had HF. but get the VHF side solid first, thats the right call for now.

I'm pretty new to this too but I went through a similar thing a few months ago and one thing that really helped me was actually doing a timed drill — like, pretend you just got an activation call and see how fast you can be ready to go. you find out real quick whats missing or annoying about your setup when theres a fake clock running lol. I discovered I had no way to mount my antenna without borrowing someone elses stuff, which was embarrassing.

also just make sure your battery is actually charged. sounds dumb but I showed up to a training exercise with like 40% because I hadnt checked it in two months. people were nice about it but yeah.