Gear weight or I should have bought a QMX

With aspirations of eventually doing SOTA and more hike-in POTA activations sooner rather than later, I wanted a better understanding of what my current gear weighs and to identify opportunities for weight savings. 

My first observation is that my G90’s weight is very close to the manufacturer’s reported value (1.63 kg); my own measurement, including the radio body and microphone, is 1.6 kg. Unfortunately, that’s pretty heavy—but not surprising.

My second observation is that the microphone and cable weigh about 30% less than the DE-19 and its cables, meaning there’s a small weight penalty for doing FT8 compared to SSB.

This exercise also revealed that my current vertical antenna setup is relatively light. My unused EFHW antenna weighs about half as much as the vertical, but that doesn’t account for additional accessories like a mast, guy lines, or a throw bag and line. Simply adding the carbon fiber fishing pole I bought as an improvised mast brings the total weight to within 10 g of my existing vertical setup.

An easy and obvious way to save weight would be to remove the common-mode choke. Unsurprisingly, it’s heavy since it uses an FT-240-43 core and RG-58 coax. I plan to replace it with a version built around an FT-140-43 core and RG-316 coax, which I expect will cut the weight roughly in half.

Even after making all the simple weight reductions I can think of, I’d only save about 0.63 kg—roughly 20% of the total 3.3 kg kit. In practice, it’s even less once I factor in my backpack and small pouches for organization. Add some water, snacks, and other day-hike essentials, and I’m easily at a 10 lb pack. While that may not sound like much, my entire multi-day backpacking kit only weighs around 15 lb.

My conclusion is that in this case fussing over small weight savings isn’t really worthwhile. If I truly wanted to build an ultralight SOTA/POTA kit, I’d ditch the G90 altogether and go with a lighter radio. In the meantime however, I'll just have to make do.