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 it. well after the last storm knocked out power for 4 days in our area i finally got serious about it. right now i have an FT-891 i was planning to use as the main rig, a 40ah LiFePO4 battery, and a random wire antenna with a 9:1 unun that i usually use in the backyard. also have a cheap chinese dual band HT but im not sure if i should rely on that or get something better for the kit.

anyway i threw everything into a pelican knockoff case from amazon and it kind of fits but its a mess of cables and nothing is really secured. i know i need a way to charge the battery without shore power - was thinking a small folding solar panel, maybe 60 watts? and i definitely need to think about logging, either paper or a tablet running something like JS8Call or Winlink.

im sure im forgetting a ton of stuff. whats in your go kits that you wish someone had told you about earlier? especially the small stuff that seems obvious once you know but nobody thinks to mention

the thing that got me was power connectors. i had everything wired up with powerpole connectors except the solar panel came with some barrel jack thing and i was scrambling to find an adapter at 2am during an actual activation. now i keep a small bag of adapters and a couple spare powerpole pigtails taped right inside the lid of the case. sounds dumb but it saved me twice since then.

also dont underestimate how annoying antenna work is in the dark in the rain - i throw a couple of clip-on LED lights in there and some gloves because coax connectors in cold wet weather are miserable. the 60w solar panel sounds about right for maintaining that battery if youre not transmitting constantly, just make sure you have a proper charge controller that plays nice with LiFePO4 chemistry, not all of them do out of the box.

for the HT i wouldnt ditch it, even a cheap one is useful as a backup or to hand to someone else helping you. but if youre doing any real emcomm work the 891 is going to be your workhorse anyway so the HT is just insurance.

paper logs, seriously. i know everyone wants to run a tablet and JS8Call and look all techy but when things go sideways having a waterproof notepad and a sharpie is just reliable in a way that electronics arent. i keep a rite in the rain pad and a couple pencils (not pens, pencils work when wet) in a ziploc in my kit and have used it more than i expected.

also - and this took me way too long to figure out - write down your frequencies. like actually write them on a laminated card. repeater inputs, simplex calling freqs, your local ARES nets, winlink gateway freqs, all of it. when youre stressed and tired and someone is asking you stuff you do not want to be fumbling through a phone trying to remember what the county ARES input is.