so we have a county ARES exercise coming up in about 5 weeks and im trying to nail down the power situation before i show up with a half-baked setup like i did last year. last year i ran everything off a 100ah lifepo4 and it was fine for the first few hours but we ended up running the net way longer than planned and i was sweating it by hour 6. had the ic-7300 and a laptop pulling maybe 20-25 amps combined at full tx which is obviously not great for battery math.

this year i want to bring either a small honda eu2200i or add another battery bank. the genny option is nice because i dont have to worry but honestly the noise is annoying and depending on where we set up i dont want to be the guy running a loud genny next to the served agency folks. the extra battery route means more weight in the truck but its quieter and cleaner power.

antenna wise i was planning on the buddipole again but last time it took me like 30 minutes to get it tuned on 40 which is kind of embarrassing during an actual activation. wondering if anyone has used the chameleon emcomm III or something like that as a faster deploy option. i mostly need 40 and maybe some 80 if we do any local traffic nets.

anyone done similar setups for multi-hour exercises? curious what people are actually running in the field vs what sounds good on paper

the eu2200i is genuinely worth having in the truck even if you dont always run it. i brought mine to a 12 hour public service event last summer and ended up not needing it because we staged near a building with an outlet, but having it there took all the anxiety out of the day. that said for a standard exercise if youre worried about noise just parallel a second 100ah lifepo4 and use the genny as backup only. two of those in parallel with even a modest solar panel on a clear day will carry you through most realistic scenarios without ever touching the generator.

on the antenna thing — i switched from the buddipole to a chameleon hybrid micro a couple years ago and setup time dropped a lot. the emcomm III is fine but its more of a wire antenna situation which means finding trees or a mast, the hybrid micro goes on a speaker stand tripod and im on 40 in maybe 8 minutes. efficiency isnt quite as good as a full dipole but for emcomm work youre usually working regional so it doesnt matter much

yeah the buddipole tuning on 40 is real, thats just kind of what that antenna is. its not a quick deploy antenna its a precision portable antenna if that makes sense. people love them but they take practice especially on the lower bands where the adjustments are more sensitive.

one thing ive started doing for exercises is pre-measuring and marking all my antenna elements with tape at the settings i know work for my most used bands, saves a ton of fumbling around. doesnt help if conditions mean you need to move but for a fixed exercise site its fine.

also on the power question — what are you running the laptop for? if its just logging you might be able to swap to a tablet or even paper logs and cut your draw down pretty significantly. the 7300 by itself isnt that bad if youre not always at full power