James Wilson46

the thing that always bites people is power cables and connectors. you think you have everything and then you're trying to run something off a battery and the anderson powerpole you need is back home in a drawer. i keep a small ziplock just full of various adapters and a couple short jumper cables. also a decent multimeter, non-negotiable for troubleshooting in the field. for antennas, an EFHW is totally fine as a primary but i'd throw in a simple roll of wire and some insulators so you can improvise if conditions or terrain dont cooperate. the FT-817 is a solid choice, ive seen those things run for days on a LiFePO4 that size if you're not transmitting constantly. one thing people skip — bring a copy of your license and a notepad even if you're logging digitally. paper doesnt need batteries. the VHF/UHF question really depends on what your local ARES or RACES group uses. worth checking before you buy a second radio because a lot of groups have specific stuff they run during activations and you want to be compatible.

had both at the same time for about 6 months. sold the HackRF. for receive only work especially HF the RSP1A isnt even close, the HackRF noise floor is noticeably worse and you really feel it on weak signals. the RSPdx is even better if you can stretch the budget but the RSP1A is already a huge step up from the rtl dongle on shortwave stuff SDRuno works fine with it and if you dont like SDRuno you can run it through SDR# or even CubicSDR with the right driver setup. i mostly run mine with HDSDR and a VAC pipe into fldigi for utility monitoring and it works great. the direct sampling workaround on the v3 dongle always felt like a compromise to me and it is, the RSP1A just handles HF properly with actual frontend filtering only gripe is SDRplay's linux support has been a bit uneven over the years but its gotten better. if youre on windows you wont have any issues

went through the exact same thing when i started, spent like two days thinking my radio was broken. it was the tone. once i got that sorted the repeater opened right up. also just as a heads up, some repeaters are pretty quiet during the day and more active in the evenings when people are driving home from work, so dont get discouraged if you get the tone right and still dont hear much, just try again around 5 or 6pm local time.