so we have this county-level exercise coming up and im trying to figure out the best way to power everything without relying on shore power. the EOC wants us to demo a fully independent setup for at least 6 hours of sustained ops, maybe longer if they extend the scenario.

right now my plan is to run my IC-7300 and a small laptop for logging off a 100ah lithium battery with a 30a power supply fed from a Honda eu2200i. the generator is quiet enough that it wont drive people crazy inside but im second guessing whether i even need it if the battery can carry the load by itself.

on the antenna side im thinking a linked dipole up maybe 25 feet on a fiberglass mast, probably targeting 40 and 80 for local nets and 20 if we need any regional traffic. the site is a fairgrounds parking lot so no trees to work with which is why im going the mast route.

my real question is — is it worth lugging the honda just to keep the battery topped off, or can i run purely off battery and just swap in a second pack if needed. the 7300 draws around 20a on transmit but were mostly going to be net control so a lot of receive time. anybody done extended field ops like this and have a feel for realistic battery consumption with that kind of duty cycle.

honestly for 6 hours with a net control duty cycle you probably dont even need the generator. if youre doing maybe 20-30% transmit time on the 7300, which is pretty typical for net control, youre looking at maybe 8-10 average amps draw. so 100ah gets you comfortably through 6 hours with headroom to spare, especially if its a decent lithium pack and not an older AGM where you cant really pull below 50%.

i did a 10 hour stint at a simulated emergency a couple years back with a 50ah battleborn and a 7300 and made it through fine running the radio at about 80 watts. kept the laptop on its own smaller battery though, that helped. the generator i brought sat in the truck the whole time honestly.

the linked dipole plan sounds solid. 25 feet center height on a fiberglass mast at a fairgrounds should work decent for regional 40m, 80 might be a bit compromised at that height but for nets its fine. bring some extra tent stakes and guy rope if the forecast has any wind, those push-up masts can get squirrelly in gusty conditions especially in an open lot with no windbreak.

bring the generator anyway, you dont have to run it the whole time. just nice to have if the scenario extends or they throw something unexpected at you. nothing worse than being the guy who has to tap out of the exercise because you ran out of juice and your backup plan was... a second battery you didnt bring.

also the eu2200i is pretty painless to haul, its not like your dragging a big open frame unit. i run mine with a 30 foot extension cord so i can stick it away from the operating position and you barely notice it. one thing worth checking — make sure whatever you use to charge the battery from the genset doesnt produce a ton of rf noise. ive had cheap charge controllers absolutely hammer 40m, like S5-6 noise floor kind of bad. the better units are filtered but its worth testing at home first before the exercise.