GO Box for Emergency Communications

[w5zit]

Here are a description and pictures of a couple of boxes I built to house a radio and power supply, along with power connections and antenna for use as an off-site emergency communications unit.

The antenna is the same as the hypodermic antenna without the PVC housing and the two shock excited elements described in the technical section of this forum.  It can be rolled up and stored in the upper compartment while the radio and power supply are in use at the base station.

Having all the components in one place and ready to grab and go will help keep from having some part missing when the unit is deployed.

73 - Jim  W5ZIT

[w5zit]

Here are the rest of the pictures and the description.

73 - Jim  W5ZIT

[w5zit]

Here is a picture of the GO Box in action.  All I had to do was grab the handles and in this case I used a mag mount antenna on a piece of sheet metal for the antenna base.  I was reading the advisory about the water problem on the 6.98 repeater.  I was handed the press release from the State Water Quality folks and I proceeded to do a QST and read the whole release.

The EOC was hard pressed to keep up with the shelters and their needs until the RACES network was established between the shelters and the EOC.  We managed to relieve the folks of that communication problem.

73 - Jim  W5ZIT