How do you folks organize the tons of electronics and components that go with this hobby? My husband would like for me to consolidate my six small boxes and scattered stuff and I'm really struggling with finding the best storage container.
Hobby.... you mean way of life?! I think you will get 20 different ways to store your electronics. Some use pelican's others use simple containers... the basic is, keep your gear dry, a complete unit with power supply and prepare it in kits so you can grab and go. If you get to the point of duplicating your equipment, create a new kit so you have a stand alone pack that can be either stored separately or issued to another family unit or team when the SHTF. Here is how I do my kits. Portable Communications Kit | Survival Monkey Forums
Store? Phui. Use it. Your go box will work in the dining room as well as the back seat of the car. My shack is entirely portable within the house on a wheeled metal shelving. (But for now, it's parked in the dining room. There's a fairly large rearrangement of the house under consideration ---. All I need is some ambition.)
Wow, there really is no way to answer this question because it's such a personal decision. My stock of radio/comms equipment would literally fill a large truck if you count all the tools, test equipment, and spare parts. I have a full test bench with a digital storage scope, signal generators, soldering station, and so on. That stuff is not portable and stays put. The spare parts are in a menagerie of boxes and bins. I even have a stock of several hundred vacuum tubes. I keep a separate toolbox of the most commonly used items and tools. It's my version of a "go box" for repairs and such. I prefer several small containers over one large one. For example, I have one toolbox devoted exclusively to antennas and RF. It contains a collection of plugs, connectors, a torch for soldering, coax seal, wire cutter/stripper, SWR meter, dummy load, and an antenna analyzer. I have a similar box for servicing batteries. It is more expensive to have separate sets of the same hand tools, but it saves a lot of time and hassle. If I am working on an antenna issue, I can just grab the Antenna/RF box and know everything I need will be in there without having to hunt down individual items stashed all over the place. My advice is to first go though everything you have and clear out any crap you don't need. When you go shopping for toolboxes or storage, do not get the first thing you see. Compare them all and think it through. After you decide what storage format works for you, buy something twice as big as you think you will need. Too many times I screwed myself by getting a toolbox that was just enough only to quickly outgrow it. It's a losing game. Skip to the end and just get the jumbo size in the first place.
I'm glad to hear from you Tevin, because a lot of this stuff is from a couple of projects I got on your page! I can't believe I haven't hooked up these solar panels yet. My husband is a true slob. For him to complain is really epic. LOL.
Unless your Steel Cabinet has Faraday Seals, on ALL Openings, it will leak RF like Air thru ChickenWire.... Might be great for Organizing Parts but as an EMP Proof container.... Nope....
Personally I don't believe that it needs to be sealed; it's not liquid, nor a gas, it s a directional flowing field . Ever look at a magnetic field in motion in an ionized atmosphere ? Much like any blast, every thing radiates out ,things out of the direct line of sight go less or uneffected . an umbrella effect so to speak. If you put a magnet on one side of a steel plate , it has almost no effect on the other side of the steel plate. Magnetic forces do not scatter around the plate to the other side. the circuit is completed on the side the magnet is on.
I would suggest you go look at a REAL Screen Room, where they do EMI Testing.... and look at the Door Gaskets, Electrical Ingress, and Egress, locations.... and try and look at these things with "RF Eyes" in stead of Visible Eyes.... It will enlighten you, significantly....
Going back to some optics courses in wayback times, light will bend around edges, not just thru lenses. RF frequencies are even higher and will bend more. They you get to photons in extremely high frequencies and you can turn them around an edge and slither thru very small gaps. Screens are good to a point, after that a solid conductive metal enclosure is all that will work, with conductive seals on the doors. Key word is "almost" and note that a magnetic field is by no means the same as an rf or higher energy field. That analogy does not work. A better analogy is a box that will block light (for our analogy, a cardboard reefer box will do.) Crawl in and have someone seal up the flaps with duct tape. OK, it's dark in there. Now, put a pinhole in the side, and it makes NO difference which side. All of a sudden you can actually see, however dimly. Light has sneaked in, just as photons from an EMP will if there is the least gap in the shield. (That analogy is not exact either, but it is illustrative.)
I use a lot of tackle boxes, the kind with the slide out divided containers. My RF box, like Tevins, has all of my connectors in the containers, solder and seal and stripping tools in the top so it's a quick grab and go. My containers are divided further by type, 1 is UHF, 2 is N, 3 BNC and SMA, and 4 is various adapters. I'm fortunate that I have accumulated enough tools over the years to stock my various kits and the bench with duplicates. I'm still in shock that you only have 6 boxes!