so we've got a county-level ARES activation drill coming up this weekend and i've been going back and forth on whether to bring the generator or just run off lithium battery packs. the drill is supposed to be about 6 hours of actual operating time, maybe a bit more if things run long like they always do.

my main rig for this is an IC-7300 running at around 50-60 watts most of the time, not full 100W because we're mostly doing voice nets and some Winlink. i've got two 100Ah LiFePO4 batteries that i picked up last year and they've been solid but i've never actually run them for a full 6 hour stretch without any solar to top them off. done the math and it seems like it should be fine but real world is always different than paper.

on the antenna side i'm thinking the 40m EFHW with the 9:1 unun up in whatever tree i can find, maybe 25-30 feet if im lucky. the site we're going to doesnt have great tree coverage from what i remember so i might need to bring the MFJ mast sections too which is another thing to haul.

anyone done extended field ops without a genny and actually tracked their consumption? curious if 200Ah realistically gets me through without having to throttle back or take breaks. also open to antenna suggestions if the tree situation is bad as expected.

200Ah of LiFePO4 at 50W out should be more than enough for 6 hours, assuming your radio is pulling somewhere around 10-12A receive and maybe 18-20A transmit at that power level. on a net you're transmitting maybe 30-40% of the time if that, so your average draw is probably 13-15A. rough math puts you around 80-90Ah used which leaves you a comfortable margin. i'd say run on batteries and skip the generator headache, nothing worse than trying to run a net over a cheap genset that's putting noise on everything.

for the antenna situation — if trees are sparse look at a vertical. a homebrew quarter wave for 40m with a few radials on the ground works well and you just need the one mast. i use a 23 foot jackite pole for mine and the whole thing breaks down to nothing. the EFHW is great but you really do need that height to make it perform and if you're fighting for attachment points it can get frustrating fast.

yeah the generator vs battery thing is one of those debates that never really ends lol. personally i brought a honda eu2200i to a field day a couple years back thinking id be the hero and the thing vibrated loose on the truck ride and by the time we got there it wouldnt start. so now i'm firmly in the battery camp for anything under like 8-10 hours of heavy use.

one thing i'd add is bring a clamp meter if you have one, just clip it on your positive lead and you can watch your actual consumption in real time. way better than guessing. helped me figure out my tuner was drawing way more than i thought when it was hunting around, turned out the motor was starting to go.