When it comes to STOA radio gear, I am focused on lightweight and fast deployment, I want to be able to finish stetting up the equipment within two minutes after arriving the summit, and I always begin my activation on FT8, and after four QSOs I switch to phone SSB.
My SOTABOX III is based on the Discovery TX-500, Digirig Mobile, housed in a plastic ammo box with a Raspberry PI and an 8AH LiFEPO battery. The whole system weight 6 lbs including the telescopic antenna.
On the top of the box sits a manual antenna tuner, nothing fancy, just a typical LC matching circuitry.
Battery, Raspberry PI and Digirig Mobile:
The battery outputs 12V and 5V at the same time, powering the transceiver and the PI simultaneously.
Completed setup, the PI is controlled via VNC, so that I can do FT8 on my cellphone:
