SHTF survival radio recommendations

[O2HeN2]

Necropost, but this looks like as good a place as any to put this!

I've been looking into "Parks on the Air" as a method to practice my mobile HF capabilities. POTA is kind of a do-it-yourself Field Day outing. Ran my first "activation" (actually going to a park, setting up and transmitting) on Friday at Cheyenne Mountain State Park and it went surprisingly well.

My first attempt with my end-fed-half-wave (EFHW) antenna didn't go so well - took me so long to set up that when I was ready, an electrical storm was bearing down on me and I had to tear it down in a hurry.

This time it took me less than 10 minutes to get up and running - and I wasn't in a hurry.

On 20M I hit Eastern Canada, California, Idaho, Washington, Texas and some of the Eastern states like Georgia with my setup, which in my book makes it a resounding success.

Here's info on the setup (I link to Ham Radio Outlet merely for convenience):

The radio is an ICOM-718, an over-20 year old design that's been updated and refined to make it simple and rugged. Something that may sound insignificant, but surprised me at just how much a difference it made was the 718's front-firing speaker. Most radios have a top firing speaker which muffles the sound. The 718's sound is very crisp and clear since it's aimed at the operator.

The antennas are Shark Hamsticks. Upside is that they're easy to set up. Downside is they're loooong, and monoband so you have to swap antennas when you change bands. To make swapping easier I have some Shark quick disconnects.

The antennas are mounted to the top of the car with an MFJ magnetic mount. Note this is for stationary operation only. The mount, coupled with the thin-metal alloy of today's modern cars doesn't make for a very good holdfast to the roof. The 17 feet of coax gets you plenty far enough away from the high frequencies that this setup is designed for to be perfectly safe.

Everything is powered by a random flooded acid deep-cycle battery I got from Sam's or Costco, charged by a Harbor Freight solar power kit (gawd, that was only $100 when I got it two years ago!) that includes the panels and a charge controller.

This is what the setup looks like on my First-gen Ridgeline (you can barely see the corner of the solar panels in front of the front tire):



And here's a link to a prepper channel that talks about the ICOM 718:



O2