so we have a county ARES exercise coming up in about three weeks and i'm trying to nail down the power situation before i haul everything out. last time we did this i ended up running a honda eu2200i for the whole weekend which worked fine but it's loud and you go through gas faster than you think, especially if you're running an IC-7300 plus a laptop plus some lighting. ended up making two gas runs which was annoying.

this time im considering just going with a big lithium battery setup instead. i've been looking at the jackery 1000 plus and some of the more purpose-built stuff like the bioenno packs but honestly not sure if a 1000wh battery is actually enough for a 36 hour activation if we're transmitting regularly on HF. we're not running a linear or anything, just the radio at maybe 50-75w and the laptop, but it adds up.

antenna wise we'll probably put up a linked dipole on a 31ft spiderpole which has always worked well for us on 40/80/20. nothing fancy. the real headache is the power. anyone done a full weekend activation on batteries only without a genny on standby? curious how it actually went in practice not just the math on paper

yeah the math and reality are pretty different when you're out there. i did a 30-something hour activation last fall with a 100ah lithium iron phosphate pack from bioenno, the 12v version, and it was close. like closer than i wanted. IC-7300 at 50w, a small laptop, and i had a little LED work light going through the night. made it but i was watching the voltage pretty closely by hour 20 or so.

if youre doing 36 hours i'd honestly say either go with two of those packs or keep the genny as a backup even if you dont plan to run it much. the eu2200i is quiet enough that if you stick it downwind and run a longer cord its not that bad. i run mine on a 50ft 10 gauge extension and put it behind a folding table with some moving blankets around it when i need to reduce the noise signature. not perfect but workable. the linked dipole setup sounds solid, that's basically what we use too, 40/20 links on a squid pole

1000wh should technically get you there if you're disciplined about it but the problem is you rarely are when you're also dealing with everything else going on at an exercise. somebody plugs in a phone charger, you run the radio higher than you meant to, whatever. i'd size up if you can. the jackery stuff works but the discharge rate limits can bite you if you're also running something with a surge draw. check what it actually allows at continuous load before you commit.

for the antenna the spiderpole linked dipole is probably the least of your worries honestly, that setup just works. what feedline are you running, RG-8X or something lighter? just asking because on a long activation the loss adds up if you're going to 80m late at night and actually need the power to count