Field Repair Kit
Edit on GitHubThe compact repair kit that fixes the beacon's most common field failures: antenna, battery, and connection repairs.
Field Repair Kit
The beacon’s field failures are few and fixable: a snapped antenna, a dead cell, a broken wire. The repair kit is the pouch that fixes all three, sized for a pack.
The kit
| Item | Fixes |
|---|---|
| Spare SMA whip antenna | The most common field failure (see Antenna Mounting) |
| Spare 18650 cell | Battery failure (see Battery Field Swap) |
| 30 cm of spare wire | Broken wires (see Wire Gauge Guide) |
| Small soldering iron + solder | Any of the above |
| Heat shrink + tape | Insulation and strain relief |
| SMA wrench / small pliers | Connector work |
| Spare SMA connector | The antenna-to-case joint |
The 20-minute rule
Every fix in the kit is a 20-minute job at most, done with gloves in a shelter. If a repair needs more than the kit, the plan was wrong, not the repair.
The skills
The kit is useless without the practice: Soldering Basics for the iron, Battery Field Swap for the cell, Homebrew Antenna for the antenna. Rehearse each repair once at home, and the field version takes minutes.
The weight
The whole kit weighs under 300 g: the price of converting a beacon failure from “mission over” to “ten-minute stop”. For a group, one kit per pair of people is the right density.
Related pages
- Emergency Kit for the signaling pouch
- Field Maintenance and Storage for the care
- Antenna Troubleshooting for the diagnosis