The Case Alumni Association generously provided us with funding for a “Go Box” in September. Today it has come to life assembled.

All the major components are in the box here, but not completely secured.
Various parts of it have been “tested” at various points leading up to today. The radio was put through it’s paces in an on air contest within days of our receiving it.
We had been using a transmitter from the estate of Jack Goldfarb, W8WGO, when we discovered the known failure mode… Apparently running the radio too long causes the main knob shaft encoder grease to fail and bind. This has since been fixed with assistance from John Gibbons, N8OBJ, and the Sears Lab.
The box, battery, radio (again) & iambic Morse Code key were put through there paces at the Engineering Challenge Carnival:

Young radio operator in training…
Some of the smaller parts are not yet install in the go box. This includes the Morse key. They are non-essential, unless someone absolutely needs to send Morse Code, but will be installed soon. However all the major components are now installed and secured.

Go Box “Tilt Test”.
The Go Box has wheels which will allow us to roll it where it needs to go. However the handle for wheeling the box stows in the bottom, so to roll it the entire thing ends up rotated 90 degrees. The tilt test was to ensure that all the equipment would stay put when it was rotated for travel.
The box has a single power input that will run everything from AC/commercial power. The power input for the box is the gray cable in the front of the Tilt Test image. However, it is worth noting that the box is not plugged in even though the radio is running.
The entire box can run without AC/commercial power. In both images the radio is running on the battery installed in the back of the box. The laptop will happily run off of its internal battery, and will be getting an option to be powered off the power supply battery arrangement as well.
There are some parts that still need adjustment/refinement. Also we’ll need a way to contain the various bits and pieces that inevitably will accumulate in/with the box.
-Nathaniel KB1QHX