so we have a county ARES drill coming up saturday and im trying to figure out the best way to power everything without dragging a huge generator out there. the EOC wants us to set up a portable station that can run for at least 6 hours, maybe more if things go long, and we need to cover 2m, 70cm, and some HF capability probably on 40m for the regional net.

right now i have a 100ah lithium battery (the bioenno 100ah one) and a 30amp powerwerx supply if we do end up using generator power. my main concern is that if someone brings a cheap generator the rf noise is going to trash everything. had that happen at a field day a couple years back where some guy showed up with a harbor freight special and we couldnt hear anything on 40 below like S7 noise.

on the antenna side i was thinking a buddipole for HF and maybe a jpole up on a painter pole for the vhf/uhf side. anyone run that combo for emcomm stuff? the buddipole feels a little fiddly to me but its what i have. also wondering if a linked dipole might be easier to deploy fast since theres usually not a lot of time to tune things in a real activation.

any thoughts on the generator noise thing especially, thats the part im most worried about

the generator noise issue is real and yeah harbor freight inverter gens are hit or miss — some of the newer ones are actually okay but you really cant count on it. what's helped us a lot is just running the radio gear off battery even when a generator is present, use the gen to charge the battery through a decent charger and keep the radio itself isolated from that whole mess. the bioenno 100ah should run your IC-7300 or whatever HF rig youre using for a good 6+ hours at moderate power levels, especially if youre doing mostly receive and occasional transmits on net check-ins rather than ragchewing at 100 watts the whole time.

on the antenna question, ive used a buddipole for emcomm before and honestly for a drill where you have some setup time its fine. the linked dipole is faster once you have it pre-cut and labeled but the buddipole gives you more flexibility if the situation changes and you need a different band. if this is just 40m for the regional net id probably pre-build a simple wire dipole with a 1:1 balun, throw it up in an inverted-v config off a mast, and call it done. way less to go wrong.

yeah dont overthink the generator thing, just dont plug your radio into it lol. battery isolation is the way to go like the other guy said. i run a 50ah lifepo4 and a small 100w solar panel for most of my portable ops and honestly for a 6 hour drill in decent weather that combo works great, generator is almost a liability more than an asset unless its night or overcast.

jpole on a painters pole is solid for 2m/70cm, works every time. i've done that setup probably a dozen times for public service events and never had issues. just make sure your feedline is decent, i fried a whole afternoon once chasing an intermittent connection that turned out to be a sketchy pl-259 on a piece of rg-8x i hadnt checked in a while