Three years ago I showed up to my first ARES activation with a Baofeng HT, a spare battery, and a notebook. The operator next to me had a pelican case with a dual-band mobile, a lithium battery bank, antenna options for VHF and HF, all the cables pre-labeled, and a laminated frequency card velcroed to the lid. He was on the air transmitting damage reports within four minutes of arriving. I spent forty-five minutes trying to program a repeater offset in the parking lot.

That was the day I started building a real go kit. Here's everything I've learned since then, both from personal deployment experience and from watching what works (and what doesn't) when the weather goes sideways.

What a Go Kit Actually Needs to Do

Before you start buying gear, think about the mission. A ham radio go kit for emergency deployment needs to:

  • Get you on the air fast at a location you've never operated from before
  • Run independently of grid power for at least 8-12 hours
  • Cover the frequencies and modes your local ARES/RACES group actually uses
  • Be portable enough that one person can carry it from a vehicle to an operating position
  • Survive being thrown in a car trunk, carried through rain, and set up on a folding table in a school gym

That last point matters more than people think. Your go kit lives in your car or a closet. It gets jostled. Things shift. Connectors bang into each other. If your setup requires delicate assembly in a controlled environment, it's not a go kit. It's a portable shack, and that's a different thing.

The Radio: Choose Based on Your Mission

The single biggest mistake I see in go kit builds on Reddit and QRZ forums: people build for every possible scenario instead of their actual likely deployment.

Ask your local Emergency Coordinator what communications you'd actually provide during an activation. In most ARES groups, the answer is VHF/UHF FM voice. That's repeater and simplex communications, usually on 2 meters and 70 centimeters. Your primary radio should reflect that reality.

For VHF/UHF Primary Operations

A 50-watt dual-band mobile radio is the backbone of most effective go kits. Something like a Yaesu FT-891 for HF — wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. For VHF/UHF: Yaesu FT-8900, Icom IC-2730, Kenwood TM-V71A, or whatever quality dual-band mobile you trust. Not a handheld as your primary radio.

Why not an HT? Power output. A 5-watt HT hitting a repeater that's borderline from your deployment location gives you scratchy, unreliable communications. A 50-watt mobile with a proper antenna gives you solid full-quieting copy. During an emergency activation, you need reliable communications, not "can you repeat that, you're breaking up."

Seriously. Keep an HT as backup, but your primary should be a mobile rig with real power output.

Adding HF Capability

If your group handles HF traffic (NTS messages, inter-county communications, Winlink for email when internet is down), you need an HF rig in the kit too. The Yaesu FT-891 is popular for go kits because it's compact and 100 watts. The IC-7100 gives you VHF/UHF/HF in one box but it's bigger. The IC-705 is tiny and brilliant but limited to 10 watts on HF (fine for digital modes, underpowered for SSB voice in poor conditions).

My kit has an FT-891 for HF and a separate dual-band mobile for VHF/UHF. Two radios means I can monitor a local repeater while running Winlink on HF simultaneously. During Hurricane Ian response in Florida, operators with single-radio setups constantly had to choose between local tactical traffic and long-haul health-and-welfare messages. Dual-radio operators handled both.

Power: This Is Where Most Go Kits Fail

You can have the best radio in the world and it's useless without power. Grid power won't be available (that's often why you're being activated). Generator power may or may not be present depending on the deployment site.

Your kit needs self-contained power. Period.

Battery Options

LiFePO4 (Lithium Iron Phosphate): This is what most serious EMCOMM operators have moved to. Lighter than sealed lead-acid, deeper discharge tolerance, longer cycle life, flat voltage curve. A 20Ah LiFePO4 battery will run a 50-watt VHF mobile radio for 10+ hours at typical duty cycles (you're not transmitting continuously).

I run a Bioenno 20Ah LiFePO4 for VHF/UHF and a separate 30Ah for the HF rig. Yes, two batteries. The HF rig at full power on SSB draws significantly more peak current.

Specific runtime math (because vague claims annoy me):

  • 50W VHF mobile, 20% transmit duty cycle: ~70W average draw = roughly 5.3A at 13.2V
  • 20Ah battery at 80% usable capacity = 16Ah usable
  • Runtime: about 3 hours at that duty cycle

Wait, that's shorter than I claimed above. Right. Because actual EMCOMM work isn't 20% duty cycle continuously. You transmit for 30 seconds, listen for 2 minutes, write things down, wait for tasking. Real-world duty cycle in emergency comms is more like 5-10% transmit time. That stretches a 20Ah battery to 8-12 hours easily.

Charging in the Field

Bring your charger. Bring a 12V charging cable for your vehicle. Bring a small (100W) solar panel if you want belt-and-suspenders redundancy. During extended activations, you'll rotate — charge while off-duty, operate on battery while on-duty.

One thing I added after my second deployment: Anderson Powerpole connectors on everything. Every cable, every radio, every battery, every charging source. No fumbling with ring terminals and wing nuts in the dark. No polarity mistakes. Just click and go.

Antennas: The Part Everyone Overthinks

For VHF/UHF deployments, you need one thing: a mag-mount or portable antenna that you can get elevated quickly. A 19-inch mag-mount dual-band whip on a vehicle roof works. A collapsible ground-plane antenna on a painter's pole works. An Arrow antenna on a camera tripod works.

What doesn't work: a rubber duck on an HT sitting on a table inside a building.

My VHF/UHF antenna kit:

  • Comet GP-3 clone (dual-band ground plane, 4.5 feet tall, breaks into 3 sections)
  • 25-foot mast made from two painters poles nested
  • 50 feet of RG-8X with pre-attached PL-259s
  • Mag-mount dual-band as backup (sticks on a filing cabinet, a car roof, or any metal surface)

For HF portable antenna work, that's a bigger topic. But the quick version: a 40/20 meter linked dipole on a 30-foot telescoping fiberglass mast covers most EMCOMM HF needs. It deploys in about 10 minutes once you've practiced.

The Container: Organization Is the Skill

Here's something nobody tells new EMCOMM operators. The difference between a useful go kit and a pile of gear isn't the gear. It's the organization. You need to deploy under stress, possibly at night, possibly in rain. Everything needs a place, and you need to find it without thinking.

I use a Pelican iM2720 Storm Case for the main radio equipment. Inside:

  • Radios in padded dividers
  • Power cables coiled and velcro-strapped
  • Anderson Powerpole distribution strip mounted to the lid
  • Laminated frequency card (local repeaters, ARES frequencies, simplex) velcroed inside the lid where I can see it instantly

Separate bag for antennas and mast (they're long and awkward — don't force them into a box). Separate pouch for cables, adapters, and small parts.

The whole thing lives by my front door. Batteries stay on a maintenance charger in the garage.

Stuff People Forget (And Regret)

A non-exhaustive list from my experience and from watching others at deployments:

  • Headphones or earbuds. Operating in a noisy EOC or shelter without headphones is miserable. You can't hear weak signals over the ambient noise of generators and people.
  • Notepad and pencils. Not pens (they freeze, they bleed, they fail). Pencils. For logging traffic, writing down addresses, copying NTS messages.
  • Printed frequency list. Your phone might be dead. A laminated card doesn't need charging.
  • Extension cord and power strip. Even though you have battery power, if AC is available at the site, use it. Save your batteries.
  • USB cables and a small phone charger. During activations, your phone dies. Other people's phones die. Being able to charge a phone builds goodwill and sometimes that phone is needed for coordination.
  • Snacks and water. Nobody is going to relieve you for 4-6 hours during a busy activation. If you don't bring food, you don't eat.
  • A folding chair. I'm not joking. Some deployment sites have no seating. You can't operate for six hours standing at a counter.

Testing Your Kit: The 15-Minute Rule

Here's my standard. Can I go from car trunk to transmitting in 15 minutes or less? Time yourself. Set up in your driveway like you just arrived at a deployment site. Pull the cases out, set up the antenna, connect everything, make a contact.

If it takes longer than 15 minutes, figure out why. Every extra connector, every cable that tangles, every component that requires assembly adds time. Simplify until you hit that target.

I do this drill quarterly. Not because I forget how my own kit works, but because things drift. Batteries need checking. Cables develop intermittent connections (that coax you routed too tightly develops a short at the connector). The frequency list needs updating when repeaters change. Quarterly shakedown catches problems before they matter.

One More Thing: Train With It

A go kit you've never operated with is not a go kit. It's a box of hope.

Set it up for Field Day. Use it for POTA activations. Bring it to your ARES training exercises. Operate field portable on a random Saturday afternoon. Every time you deploy it, you find something to improve. A cable that's too short. A connector that's hard to reach. A battery that doesn't last as long as you calculated.

The goal isn't a perfect kit. The goal is a kit you know cold, that you can deploy in your sleep, that works every time you pull it out of the car. That only comes from repetition.

Now go build yours and stop reading about other people's kits on Reddit. Seriously. Get the gear, get the box, get it organized, and then go use it.