I did a lot of portable work with my old
Argonaut 505. Took up a lot more room in my
backpack that modern rigs. I wrapped it in
a towel to protect it. No keyer or other
modern contrivances, but no noisy fan,
either.
Hauled it around VK, ZL, KH6, KL7, as well
as stateside. Had to replace the tuning coil
in a logging camp in Alaska, which included
field-stripping it with a Swiss Army knife,
filing down a nail to make an Allen wrench
to get the knobs off, and resoldering the VFO
circuit with a propane torch. (After that I
kept an Allen wrench taped to the inside
of the top cover.)
One of the best memories was breaking
pileups into KG4 and KZ5 (as they were then)
from Alaska on Field Day with 2 watts from
a dying battery.