Diana Patel

So I've been a ham for about 3 years now and I keep saying I'm gonna put together a proper go-kit and never actually do it. Well after the ice storm last month knocked out power for 4 days around here I figured I really need to stop procrastinating on this. We had a couple nets running on the local repeater for welfare traffic and I felt kind of embarrassed honestly that my whole setup was just my HT with a half dead battery and no way to charge anything. So I started pulling stuff together and I've got a Yaesu FT-891 I was thinking of using as the main radio since I already own it and it does HF and I can throw a wire antenna pretty quick. Got a 20ah LiFePO4 battery I picked up a while back. Thinking a small folding solar panel too. I've got a decent RigExpert for digital modes if needed. Packed it all in a Pelican knockoff case from Amazon. My question is what are the things people always forget until they actually need them? I feel like I have the big obvious stuff but I know there's gonna be something dumb I overlooked. Cables? Adapters? I put in some coax but not sure how much spare. Also what do you guys do for logging when you dont have a laptop running? Just paper?

yeah same thing happened to me a few months back. i think i said my callsign backwards or something. the net control was super nice about it though and just moved on. i think most people running nets have seen everything at this point and a nervous new ham stumbling through a check-in is like the least of their concerns. just keep showing up, it gets easier really fast