so i've been meaning to do this for like two years and i finally sat down last weekend and actually built out a go-kit. nothing super fancy, just a rubbermaid tote with a Yaesu FT-891 in there, a 40ah lithium battery from bioenno, some coax, my KX4 antenna, a few adapters, and a notepad with my local ARES frequencies written down. threw in a headlamp and some granola bars too because why not.

anyway my club has been pushing everyone to have a kit ready for the hurricane season and honestly i feel better having it done. but now im second guessing myself wondering if theres stuff i should have that i dont. like i dont have a backup HT in there — should i? and what about a copy of my license, do people actually keep a paper copy in their kit or is that overkill. also not sure about power — i can run the 891 at 100w but should i limit myself to lower power to conserve the battery during an actual deployment. my elmers kind of gave me conflicting advice on that last one.

curious what others keep in their kits and if theres anything obvious im missing that you wish youd thought of earlier

that sounds like a solid start honestly, way more thought out than my first kit which was basically a HT and a phone charger in a grocery bag lol. a few things i'd suggest from experience running ARES deployments — yes keep an HT in there, even a cheap baofeng is fine, because when you're coordinating locally and your main rig is tied up on a net or something it's really handy to just have something you can hand off or use for simplex without messing with your setup.

on the power question i usually run 50w as kind of a default unless conditions are bad or the served agency needs better coverage. 100w will eat your 40ah faster than you think especially if youre transmitting a lot. do a rough duty cycle calculation for your expected usage and youll get a sense of how long it'll hold up. i usually throw a small solar panel in the car too just in case things go long.

paper copy of license, yeah i keep one. also a copy of my ARES membership card and a basic ICS form or two. during a real event the last thing you want is to be digging through your phone to prove who you are to some incident commander who's never met you. oh and a sharpie. always a sharpie.

nice work getting it done, most people just talk about it forever. im still finishing mine up tbh so i probably shouldn't give too much advice but one thing i read somewhere was to actually run the kit through a full test before you need it — like set it all up in the backyard or wherever and see if anything doesnt work or youre missing a cable or whatever. i did that and found out i had the wrong PL-259 adapter and would have been totally stuck. better to find out on a Sunday afternoon than during an actual activation