Part of our Emergency Communications and Preparedness guide.
Let’s be honest about something before we get into the list. Most people don’t have a spare handheld sitting in a drawer, let alone a spare HF rig. Radios aren’t cheap, and telling someone to buy a whole second station just to shield it “in case” is not realistic advice for most hams. But a Faraday enclosure doesn’t have to hold a full duplicate shack to be worth building. Even one cheap handheld, a spare battery pack, and a printed page of frequencies beats having nothing at all if your primary gear gets fried by an EMP or similar event. Something is better than nothing. Here’s what I’d actually put in the can, in rough order of priority.
How Many Handhelds
Two is the number I’d aim for if you can swing it. One for you, one for a family member or neighbor you’d actually need to talk to. If you can only manage one, that’s still a massive upgrade over zero, don’t let the ideal number talk you out of doing the minimum.
Skip your daily driver for this. Whatever you’re currently carrying stays out in the world where it’s useful. What goes in the can is a cheap, dedicated backup, something in the sub $50 to $100 range like a BTECH UV-PRO or similar budget dual-bander. You’re not trying to shield your best gear, you’re trying to guarantee that something survives. A $40 handheld that works after the fact beats a $400 handheld that doesn’t exist because you couldn’t justify buying a spare.
One HF Radio, Not Your Best One
My primary shack radio is an IC-7300 Mark II, and that thing is staying on my desk, not going into a can. If you’re going to shield an HF radio at all, look at it the same way as the handhelds: cheap and dedicated beats expensive and irreplaceable.
A used or budget QRP rig is the realistic target here. Something like a Xiegu G90 gives you an actual HF station, built-in tuner included, without asking you to sacrifice your main radio or spend rig money twice. If HF is out of budget entirely for a second radio, that’s fine. Prioritize the handhelds first and treat HF as the stretch goal once the basics are covered.
Antennas Are Cheap Insurance
Antennas are the easiest, cheapest thing to over-provision, so don’t skip them. A wound up end fed half wave or a simple 2m/70cm roll up j-pole weighs almost nothing and takes up almost no room. Throw in a length of coax, a couple of adapters (SMA to BNC, PL-259 to whatever your radio uses), and you’ve covered a gap that would otherwise leave a perfectly good shielded radio useless because it has nothing to plug into.
Batteries: Pick What Survives Storage
This is where people get it wrong. A fully charged lithium battery pack sitting untouched for two years is not a battery you can count on, and rotating batteries in and out of a sealed can defeats the point of sealing it. Instead, look for a handheld that accepts an AA battery tray. Store a stock of lithium primary AA cells (not rechargeable) alongside it. Lithium primaries have a shelf life measured in a decade or more and don’t need babysitting the way a lithium-ion pack does.
If your HF radio needs 12V, a small sealed lead acid or LiFePO4 pack works, but plan to swap it out every year or two on a set schedule. Write the swap date on the outside of the can with a paint pen so you actually remember to do it.
Paper Beats Pixels
Whatever electronics you shield, your knowledge doesn’t need shielding, but your notes do if they only exist on a phone. Print and store:
- A copy of your license
- A printed band plan and the specific frequencies from your SHTF frequency list
- The radio’s quick reference manual, or better, a printed field card covering programming, VFO mode, power settings, and scanning without needing software
- A small paper log book and a pencil, since pens dry out and phones die
None of this weighs anything or costs meaningful money, and it’s the difference between a radio you can actually operate and a radio you’re staring at trying to remember how the menu works.
Other Small Stuff Worth the Space
A few last additions that punch above their weight:
- A basic multimeter, for checking whether a battery or connection actually survived
- Spare fuses for whatever radio you’re storing
- A handful of zip ties and a roll of electrical tape
- Earbuds or a cheap speaker mic, since a handheld without audio access is only half useful
What This Actually Costs
Realistic numbers, not aspirational ones. A single budget handheld, a battery tray, a set of lithium AAs, a roll up antenna, and printed docs runs somewhere in the $75 to $150 range, and that’s a genuinely useful kit. Add a second handheld and you’re closer to $150 to $250. Add a budget HF radio like the G90 and you’re looking at another $450 to $500 on top of that, which is where this stops being an easy add-on and starts being a real financial decision.
Build it in that order. Get the cheap handheld and the paper documentation squared away first, since that’s the tier that actually matters most for a neighborhood or family that needs to talk to each other. Everything past that, spare HF, extra antennas, redundant batteries, is upside you add when the budget allows it, not a prerequisite for starting.
The enclosure itself, an ammo can, a galvanized trash can, or a dedicated Faraday bag, matters less than actually using it. A $30 ammo can with a $50 handheld inside beats a $300 military surplus Faraday cabinet sitting empty because you never got around to filling it.