so we have a county-level exercise coming up in about 5 weeks and im trying to nail down the power situation before i start stressing about antennas. last time we ran this thing we had a Honda EU2200i and it worked fine but we were also only running an IC-7300 and a laptop, maybe 150-200w draw total. this time we're adding a second station (probably another 7300 or maybe a 706 if that's what somebody brings) and we want to keep a go-kit HT charging bank going too.

my gut says the EU2200i can probably handle it if we're smart about it but im wondering if anyone has actually pushed one of those generators with two HF rigs and misc accessories at the same time. the 2200 watts is peak, continuous is more like 1800 i think, and once you factor in the inverter efficiency and whatever else is pulling... i dont know, it feels tight. we also want to have a fallback battery setup in case the genny craps out or we need to go quiet for some reason (noise complaints have been an issue at this site before).

on the antenna side we're thinking two separate dipoles on separate feedlines, oriented about 90 degrees from each other to cut down on intermod between the two stations. spacing is gonna be whatever the site allows, probably 75-100ft apart if we're lucky. anyone done this at an exercise and had interference issues even with that separation? last exercise we had some nasty audio on the other station when both were transmitting near the same time and it was just one antenna shared with a switch. separate antennas should fix that right?

anyway open to any thoughts on the power side especially, that's the part keeping me up at night

the EU2200i should be fine for what you're describing honestly. i ran one at a 3-day SET last fall with an IC-7300 and an FT-991A both going, plus a small UPS keeping a laptop and a Pi-based winlink node alive, and we never saw it sweat. maybe 60-70% load at peak. the thing about the honda inverter gens is they throttle down when the load drops so your average fuel burn is way less than you'd expect. we went like 8 hours on maybe 1.5 gallons.

that said yeah keeping a battery bank in parallel is just smart. we run a 100ah LiFePO4 with a DC-DC charger off the generator and it acts as a buffer and backup at the same time. means if the genny does hiccup or you kill it to move it you don't even notice at the rig. way cleaner than trying to hot-switch or scramble.

on the antenna thing, yeah separate feedlines and 90 degree orientation will help a lot. we still put bandpass filters on both stations at our exercises just to be safe, especially if both stations might be on 40 at the same time. even 100ft apart on the same band you can still hear the other guy if the filters aren't there.

yeah the intermod you heard last time was almost certainly the shared antenna situation, two rigs into a switch is asking for trouble unless you have really good isolation and even then. separate antennas will be night and day difference.

one thing i'd add on the dipole spacing — 90 degrees is good but if both stations might end up on 40m at the same time try to get them as far apart physically as you can too, like if 75ft is possible go 75ft. the cross-polarization helps but distance still matters on the lower bands where the wavelengths are longer. if one is running 40 and one is on a different band entirely then you probably won't even notice.

also just a random thought — if you're already running two full HF stations for an exercise, have you guys looked at doing a quick RF survey of the site beforehand? even just walking around with an HT and a spectrum display or SDR dongle can tell you a lot about what kind of noise floor you're dealing with and whether there's any local interference to worry about before you're trying to troubleshoot it mid-exercise when everyone's stressed out.