With departure approaching quickly, the equipment plan is finalized and everything has been assembled, powered, and is currently operating at home. The emphasis is on reliability, airline survivability, and keeping the weight & number of bags to a reasonable amount.
Carry on, Pelican 1535
This case contains the core station electronics and anything I am not willing to place in checked baggage.
Icom IC-705 transceiver
JUMA PA-1000+ amplifier
Personal item, GORUCK GR1 21L
This bag supports station control, and logging.
Laptop
RigExpert Stick antenna analyzer
Heil Proset 7 headset with IC-705 adapter
All the connecting cables for the station
Checked luggage, Pelican 1615
This case carries all antenna and site infrastructure for the main station.
Spiderbeam 10 meter mast with guying and stakes
Antenna elements & radials covering 40m, 20m, 15m, and 10m
Coaxial feed lines and baluns
Hand tools and general station support gear
Why this setup
The IC-705 paired with the JUMA PA-1000+ provides an excellent balance of portability and performance for travel based operating.
The multiband vertical covering 40m through 10m was selected to focus effort where it matters most for CQ WPX SSB, while remaining fast to deploy and tolerant of limited space. A single vertical with dedicated elements keeps setup time short, minimizes mechanical complexity, and allows quick band changes during the contest.
At this point, the remaining work is logistics rather than engineering.