so ive been meaning to put together a proper go-kit for like two years now and every time i sit down to do it i end up going down a rabbit hole and not actually doing anything. our local ARES group has been nudging me to get something ready and honestly after that ice storm last january where we lost power for 5 days i think its finally time to stop procrastinating.

my situation is i have a Yaesu FT-891 for HF and a couple of handhelds, a TYT and an older VX-7R. i was thinking of centering the go-kit around the 891 since it can do HF and i can throw a wire antenna up pretty quick but im not sure if thats the right call or if i should just focus on VHF/UHF for local emcomm stuff. i have a deep cycle battery i use for portable ops but its heavy as heck and i dont always want to lug that around.

also what do people actually put in these things beyond the radio? like documentation, spare parts, that kind of stuff. i feel like every list i find online is either way too minimal or so comprehensive its basically a go-bag for surviving the apocalypse. just looking for what you guys actually carry day to day for this stuff.

the rabbit hole is real, i spent about six months overthinking mine before i just started throwing stuff in a pelican case and calling it done. honestly that was the right call because you can always refine later.

for what its worth i run two separate kits -- a small one thats basically grab and go for local stuff, just a handheld with a spare battery pack, a slim-jim rolled up, my ARES ID and a laminated card with the local repeater freqs and simplex channels. that kit lives by my door and weighs maybe 4 pounds. the bigger kit with the IC-7300 and a tuner and the LiFePO4 battery, that one takes more planning to deploy and i only grab it when i know im going to a real activation or something longer term.

on the battery thing -- if the 891 is your main HF rig a 20-30ah lithium iron phosphate battery is way more manageable than a deep cycle and itll run that radio for a long time at reasonable power. bioenno makes decent ones, not cheap but worth it for the weight difference. and yeah document everything, laminate your frequency lists, keep a paper log in there because you cant assume any digital stuff will survive. spare coax connectors, a multimeter, some wire, fuses for your power connections -- that kind of basic stuff adds up but doesnt take much space.

dont overthink the HF vs VHF thing too much, for most ARES activations around here its 90% VHF/UHF work on repeaters and simplex. the HF capability is nice if you need to link to a section net or something but day to day local emcomm is almost all 2m and 70cm in my experience. that said having the 891 available is never a bad thing.

one thing i didnt see mentioned -- make sure somebody besides you knows where the kit is and roughly how to power it up. had a situation a couple years back where the designated operator got sick right before an activation and we scrambled because his kit was in his truck and nobody else was familiar with it. basic stuff but easy to overlook.