Learned a lot from this Conferance

While I don't agree with aspects of ARES and RACES. I found the content from the presenters to be pretty pertinent. I took many ideas and insights from the conference.

   

I will say that it is really slow until about 45 minutes in. all you will miss is the roll call.

the two presenters were Jerry Wellman W7SAR and Larry Jacobs WA7ZBO 

both of these gentlemen had great ideas and I value them as great Elmer in their own respect.

Things that I found interesting were the concept of  a modular go kit, and a charging solution that takes the guessing out of maintaining batteries.

Some of the things I took away from their presentations were as follows:

• Go Kits should be modular so that you can customize the gear to the deployment assignment.
• Fancy radios are not going to be better then reliable radios.
• You should have checklists for each module and each planned event that you plan on going to.
• You should repack you modules after each event to keep them ready. Do it after the event so you don't forget.
• Filter what is neat from what is needed.
• Learn from inconvenience. Take notes
• Eat a MRE or two. See if you like them, Find a couple that you do and use them for food on a deployment.
• Pack water or a means to filter or treat water. 
• Have tools as part of your go kit. Include spare parts like fuses.
• Make sure your Anderson Power Pole connectors are oriented correctly (ie. facing the pole, tabs down the red is on the left.)
• Mark your gear - enough said.
• Be a volunteer professional.
• Using a Solar Charge Controller to take the uncertainty out of charging batteries and making the charging sources various.

I plan on taking these things into consideration when I redesign my go kit. My version 1.0 kit is not nearly as comprehensive as these that I saw. 

I am currently in the midst of designing version 2.0 and I have found the value of Checklists,

and modularity to make my "go-kit" work for me. 

Quote:

"The nice thing about not planing is that failure will come as a complete surprise."

Stay tuned for more on this.

de kg7rzx 73.