so our ARES group has a county-wide exercise coming up and im trying to figure out the best way to power everything for a 12-hour deployment. we'll be running two HF stations (one for NTS traffic, one for liaison with the EOC) plus a VHF/UHF packet node and a couple handhelds on a charging hub. last exercise we had a Honda eu2200i running everything and it worked fine but man that thing is loud and we burned through about 3 gallons of gas which felt like a lot for what we were actually running.

ive been looking at doing a hybrid setup this time — maybe run the generator for a couple hours to charge a big LiFePO4 bank and then go quiet on the generator for a while. the IC-7300s pull maybe 20-22 amps at full power but were mostly running 50-60 watts so probably averaging more like 8-10 amps? been trying to do the math and i keep second-guessing myself on how big the battery needs to be.

also the antenna situation is always a mess at this site. the county EOC parking lot has zero good trees and they dont want us driving stakes into the pavement so last time we ended up with a couple of buddipoles on camera tripods which honestly performed worse than i expected, especially on 40m. thinking about bringing a spiderbeam pole this time for a simple inverted-V but not sure how to secure the base without stakes. anyone dealt with similar site restrictions?

the generator noise thing is real, especially if you're inside a building and everyone's trying to talk. we switched to a 100ah lithium battery with a 30 amp anderson powerpole feed going to a distribution block and honestly for most of a day it handles everything fine as long as your rig isnt sitting at 100w continuous. the math your doing sounds about right — 10 amps average draw times 12 hours is 120ah but you dont want to drain lithium all the way so call it a 150-160ah pack minimum if you're not recharging at all. if you're doing the hybrid thing a 100ah is probably workable, just run the genny every 3-4 hours for a top-up.

for the antenna base problem — we use a canvas sandbag base like the ones made for photography light stands, you can get them at any camera shop. stack two or three of them around the base of the spiderbeam pole and it holds up fine in anything less than really serious wind. you still need guys for the pole obviously but the base stays put without touching the pavement.

yeah the buddipole on a tripod on 40m is gonna be rough, the feedpoint is like 4 feet off the ground and the whole radiation pattern is basically going straight up which is fine for NVIS but if your EOC liaison is more than 200 miles away you might struggle. inverted-V off a 30 or 33 foot mast is way better. the spiderbeam poles are good but if you want somthing a bit more packable the SOTAbeams poles are lighter and go up to about 10 meters.

one thing i'd think about — if the site really doesn't allow stakes at all, you can guy the base of the pole to the trailer hitch of whatever vehicle you drove in. run three guys at 120 degrees and tie two of them to the bumper/hitch area and one to a car wheel. done it a bunch of times in parking lots. obviously you need a long enough feedline run but that's usually not a big deal.