so ive been putting together a go-kit for emcomm use and im kinda stuck on the power side of things. right now i have a 100ah lifepo4 battery that i built up last year and its been great for portable stuff but im not sure its gonna cut it for a multi-day deployment where were running HF and maybe a repeater link simultaneously.

the antenna situation is mostly sorted - got a buddipole that works decent enough and ive been experimenting with a random wire with a 9:1 unun which honestly performs better than i expected on 40 and 80. but the generator question is where i keep going back and forth. a small honda eu2200 seems like the obvious answer for recharging but the weight and noise factor at something like a shelter or EOC setup is annoying to think about.

anyone run a similar kind of dual setup where you lean on batteries for the radio and only fire the genny to top off? curious how that actually works in practice vs just running the genny all the time. also wondering if the inverter noise from even a quiet genny causes any issues on HF receive

yeah we've done exactly this for a couple ARES deployments and the battery-primary with genny-for-topping approach works really well once you dial in the math. basically you want to know your radio's average current draw which on most 100w HF rigs running at maybe 50-60w output with a 50/50 duty cycle is somewhere around 10-12 amps continuous if you include the laptop and accessories. so your 100ah lifepo4 gives you a solid 8 hours of comfortable margin without touching the genny at all.

the eu2200 is a good choice but honestly for just charging duty you dont even need to run it at full tilt. we usually let the battery drop to around 30% then run the genny for a couple hours to bring it back up. its quieter than you think at distance and the inverter generator type keeps the AC clean enough that a decent charger handles the rest. RFI from it has never been a real problem for us on 40m with the genny sitting 30 feet away from the antenna feedpoint. your mileage may vary on 80 but just orient the antenna away from it and use a good choke balun at the feedpoint and youre usually fine

the random wire with 9:1 unun thing is interesting - whats your counterpoise situation look like? i ask because ive seen a lot of guys get mediocre results and blame the antenna when really its the ground system thats the weak link especially on 80. even just 3 or 4 radials laid on the ground makes a noticeable difference. anyway not trying to derail your power question just something to think about if youre optimizing the whole package