so ive been meaning to do this for like two years and after the storms last spring kind of scared me into actually getting off my butt about it. put together a go-kit over the past few weeks and figured id share what i landed on and maybe get some feedback from folks who have actually deployed with one of these things.

ended up going with a Yaesu FT-857D as the main rig since i already had one and it covers HF/VHF/UHF which felt right for a grab-and-go situation. threw it in a harbor freight pelican-style case with some foam cut out, added a 40ah lithium battery from bioenno, a small PWRgate, and a little samlex power strip thing. antenna wise i packed a slim jim for 2m/70cm rolled up, a random wire with a tuner for HF emergencies, and a squid pole. total weight came out to around 22 lbs which is... heavier than i wanted honestly.

couple things im not sure about - how much do you actually need on the HF side for a typical emcomm deployment? my local ARES group mostly works 2m but i always figured having HF capability was smart. also wondering if anyone has a good system for keeping the battery topped off in storage, right now im just putting it on a maintainer every couple weeks but not sure if thats the best approach for lithium.

anyway curious what others have in their kits and what you wish you'd included or left out

22 lbs isnt bad at all honestly, my first go-kit was closer to 35 and i nearly threw my back out hauling it up two flights of stairs at a shelter during a drill. learned real quick that portable doesnt mean much if you cant actually move it around. what case did you end up going with? ive been eyeing some of those apache cases at harbor freight, seems like basically the same thing as pelican for a fraction of the cost.

on the HF question - depends a lot on what your served agency actually needs. for most county-level ARES stuff youre right that 2m handles the bulk of it, nets, traffic passing to EOC etc. but HF is huge if something knocks out the repeaters or you need to pass traffic out of the region. i always tell newer emcomm folks to think in layers - local VHF first, then regional HF if that breaks down, then satellite or winlink as backup. having the 857 covers you for most of that which is great.

for the lithium battery maintenance i wouldnt stress too much, those bioenno packs are pretty well protected internally. i check mine about once a month and top it off if its dropped below like 90%, they dont really want to sit at 100% for months at a time but they also dont need the same babying as older AGM stuff. just dont let it drop all the way down and youll be fine.

the one thing i always tell people about go-kits is dont forget the non-radio stuff. like yeah the rig and battery matter but ive shown up to deployments where guys had beautiful setups and then couldnt log anything because they forgot a notepad. sounds dumb but when youre tired and stressed you want everything right there. i keep a small ziplock in my kit with pens, a few sheets of ICS forms printed out, my callsign card, and a little laminated freq sheet for our local nets and simplex channels.

also earplugs. shelters are loud.