Travel and storage for a pocket unit

Coil the wire the way it wants to go

Lead wires fail at the two ends, right where the cable meets the plug and where it meets the pin. Both are killed by the same thing: a tight bend held for hours. A wire wrapped hard around the unit puts that bend exactly where the molded collar already grips.

Coil loosely instead, in a circle about the width of your palm, and let the coil fall the way the cable already curves. A cable that has been coiled the same way since it was new keeps that memory and stays untangled on its own.

Pads travel on their liners, flat

Never pack pads loose. The liner goes on, the pads go back in their packet or holder, and the packet goes somewhere it will not be sat on. Gel pressed against a fabric lining for a flight comes out fuzzy and stays that way.

Heat is the other travel risk. A car glovebox in summer runs far above anything a drawer ever sees, and gel left there turns soft and migrates to one side of the backing. If a pack has to live in a car, it lives in the cabin, not the trunk.

Batteries and chargers

Rechargeable units in this catalog take a common USB cable, which means you probably do not need to pack a dedicated charger, only to check that the one you are bringing fits the port. Charge before you leave rather than on arrival, since a full unit will hold its charge through a trip.

For long storage, a battery kept somewhere near half charge ages better than one left flat for a season. Bring it back out every couple of months and give it a top up.

• Loose coil, palm width, following the cable’s own curve.
• Pads on liners, in a holder or packet, kept flat.
• Cabin rather than trunk, drawer rather than window sill.
• Charged before the trip, near half full for long storage.

What we put in the case

Our kits come with a case because the case is the storage, not the wrapping. It holds the unit, the coiled leads and the pads in their holder at the sizes they were meant to sit at. Keeping everything in one box is also how you avoid the usual drawer outcome, where the unit is right there and the wires are not.