[Ares-races] Portable Station help wanted

[Grant Hopper]

This has been an interesting thread to watch over the last day.  It's 
obvious that a lot of people have a different take on what is "right" 
for themselves, the disagreement comes when they are trying to tell 
someone else what to do.

As the longtime training officer, and deputy operations officer for a 
large Department of Emergency Management associated RACES unit, my 
experience has been that many people start out with grand ideas and 
want to cover every situation.  That quickly changes as the realities 
of budget, and situation- ie. assignment and needs of the served 
agency or agencies come into play.

Experience will teach you what you do and don't need in EVERY 
situation.  That's what you must have.  In our group, the basics are 
a HT, personal items, forms, a notepad and pens.  Everything else is 
optional.  In some cases our members need only bring their operations 
cheat sheet with frequencies and our preplan.  This is because we are 
sending people out to county, city and other organization EOCs and 
everything they need is there.  In other cases they have to work out 
of their car.   Mostly a small gymbag or daypack will carry 
everything you need.

Those may not be cool, but they get the job done and are easy to 
carry where you need to be mobile.  Some of our members use items 
like a handcart/handtruck to carry a storage box or milk crate with 
radio hardware built in.  (On a handcart for moving the kit, I use a 
milk crate with a power supply, dual bander, TNC and a metal plate 
fastened to the top so I can attach a mag mount.  A separate gel cell 
gets hooked up where I can't get AC power.  It has velcro attachment 
points for cables, a spare mic and everything I need to hook up a 
packet or APRS station to my laptop or to a served agency's computer 
-CD burned with all the software I might need.  I throw my 72 hour 
kit, and radio jump kit on top and I'm ready to go.  I can strap the 
thing down in my truck to get a second operating position.  I have a 
similar setup for HF but have never needed to use that for an 
operation since we always seem to have our needs met by VHF/UHF 
operations.  The HF setup is GREAT for field day though.)

The army used to have these great field desks that packed up into a 
large chest.  It was a desk, file cabinet (one drawer), supplies, 
etc.  Problem was that it was a lot to haul.  That might be fine for 
a headquarters section or whatever, but wasn't practical when you 
need to be more mobile.  Thus, one of your considerations for a 
design is your mobility needs, and portability.

One member insists that his travel trailer is his kit.  That is a bit 
of an extreme but it illustrates my point.  Your kit should be what 
you will use.  If you get called out once a year, or are trying to 
get prepared for the "big one" have fun, but don't forget that in the 
mean time, you need to have something practical or you are going to 
get left out when they need people who can integrate into their 
operation (remember, you are there to help them...)  Needless to say, 
travel trailer guy doesn't get called out much , if at all because we 
need people who can take their gear and ride with someone else up a 
logging road to a search base, hop on a fire engine or helicopter, or 
set up at the city hall EOC next to the fire chief.  If you can't 
meet the needs, there's no point in building the superkit unless it's 
really to show off or for field day.

As for stations in tool boxes,  A lot of APRS stations are set up in 
those.  If you look on the web, you should be able to find a number 
of them.  The designs are easily adapted but it does require a bit of 
work on your part.  After all, we can't expect others to do our 
thinking for us. We're supposed to do the thinking ( and 
communicating) for others.

GH

>I believe most any portable station will be one of custom design and trying
>to use readily available commercial product will introduce another set of
>compromises.
-- 
G. F. Hopper Esq.
ghopper@eskimo.com                             KB7WSD

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