so we have this county-level ARES exercise coming up in about 3 weeks and im trying to nail down our power situation before then. last time we did one of these i brought my honda eu2200i and it worked fine but we had a couple other operators running off it too and i ended up with some pretty bad RFI on 40m that i never fully tracked down. wasnt terrible but enough to be annoying on SSB.

this time im thinking about setting up a bit more carefully. my main rig will be the IC-7300 and we'll probably run a linked dipole or maybe just an EFHW with a 9:1 unun depending on where we end up setting up. the site they picked is kind of a sloped field behind the county EOC so i should have decent options for antenna orientation.

my question is mainly about the generator noise — do people usually run a separate filtered power strip or something between the eu2200i and the radio, or is the inverter output on those hondas clean enough that its not worth worrying about? i also have a 100ah LiFePO4 battery i could use and just keep the generator for charging duty only but im not sure if that adds a whole other layer of complexity with the charging current causing noise too. anyone run a similar setup?

the eu2200i is about as clean as small generators get but ive still seen it cause grief with sensitive receivers, especially on the lower bands. what helped me was keeping the generator as far from the operating position as practical — like at least 30-50 feet if the extension cord run allows it — and making sure the ground stake is good. also check that your coax shield is actually grounded at the operating end and not just floating, that caught me out once for what felt like forever before i figured it out.

the battery idea is honestly not a bad one. i run a similar lifepo4 setup and just let the generator charge it while im operating, keeps the charging load off the radio circuit entirely. you do want a decent DC-DC isolator or at least a good filter choke on the charge line if youre running both at the same time. doesnt have to be complicated but worth doing. the 7300 is a pretty quiet rig on receive so you might be fine either way, just depends how bad the site is for noise pickup.

for what its worth i ran almost exactly that setup at a SET last fall, eu2200i plus a 7300, efhw up in a tree with a 64:1 unun. had no real complaints on the generator noise front but i was only on 20 and 15 so maybe wouldnt have noticed on 40. the sloped field thing might actually help you with the EFHW, those things love a bit of elevation at the feedpoint end if you can manage it.