Digital Go Box

I attended a American Red Cross Regional Disaster Institute two weeks ago, and had the pleasure of meeting Frank O’Laughlin, WQ1O.  Frank’s a busy guy, deeply involved with ARES and the ARC.  His passion is putting together various “Go-Boxes” to support emergency communication in disasters.  One of Frank’s comments during the meeting was that most hams would need many hours to collect the parts to assemble a portable station.  Frank showed several examples of his work, and they were very complete:  Rig, AC Power Supply, power/digital/RF wiring in place, and current meter.  Even a clock.  The user would simply put the station on the desk, connect the AC power and coax, and be up and running with NBEMS or voice.

Frank O’Laughlin WQ1O Digital Go Box

Of course I have my 6-pound ham station in a bag, but a QRP HF rig isn’t very useful in a local disaster.   So I decided to follow the excellent example that Frank provided and build a Digital Go Box (DGB), and a portable antenna in a bag to round things out.

The basis of the DGB is a 2 meter Yaesu FT2900R.  A Samlex SEC-1223BBM.  This 23 amp switching supply also has a built-in battery backup and charger.  Designed for use with a large SLA, this is also compatible with LiFePO4 batteries that have been designed as SLA replacements.  A LFP-B12V12AH was chosen (12 AH — enough to run the rig for an hour at 50% duty cycle and many hours on receive).  That battery has full battery management build in:  over voltage, over discharge, over current, and cell balancing.  The 4 amp output of the power supply will completely charge it in 3 hours.  A SignaLink USB interface and Asus 1215B Netbook round out the setup.  The traditional AC power supply for the netbook has been replaced with a DC car charger, allowing operation from 12 VDC.

A Pelican 1560 case (rolling suitcase-style) was chosen as the housing.  This is deep enough to allow the standard foam to be used on the top and bottom, and has enough area that the rig, ps, battery, charger, interface, and Netbook can be mounted to a 1/4″ plywood base that can be lifted out of the case.  The plywood base with equipment weighs 18 pounds.  The rolling case weighs 19 pounds, so the total is 37 pounds.

A second bag contains an On Stage Speaker Stand SS7761B, 50 feet of RG8X coax, and a 9 foot long Diamond CP22E antenna, and a 25 foot AC power cord.  This bag weighs 20 pounds and can deploy a high gain vertical antenna that is ground based with a total height of 15 feet.

Frank is a big fan of boxes that you just open on whatever surface you have and screw the coax on.  This approach is a bit different in that I wanted to keep the box watertight and felt that the size of the box was a bit large for a tabletop.  So I decided to use the Pelican case as it is designed — as a padded protective case.  Once the case is open, you lift the plywood base out with two handles on the side and place it on the table.  Everything is then ready to go.  Maybe the case can become a nice foot-stool?