so we have a county ARES exercise coming up in about three weeks and im trying to nail down the power situation before i commit to hauling everything out there. last time i ran a honda eu2200i and it was fine but honestly it felt like overkill for what i was actually running — ic-7300 at like 50-60 watts, a signallink, laptop, and a small fan. total draw was probably under 300 watts steady state.

been thinking about just going lifepo4 this time. i have a 100ah battleborn that i barely ever use and if i pair it with my 30 amp bioenno charger i could keep it topped off overnight between operating shifts. the exercise is two days, roughly 6-8 hours of actual radio time each day. my gut says the battery is more than enough but i keep second-guessing myself especially if somebody else wants to plug something in or if we end up running longer than planned.

antenna side is sorted i think — setting up a linked dipole for 40/80 on a 31ft jackite pole, maybe throw up a jpole for 2m vhf ops if they want that too. site is a county park with decent tree coverage which is good for shade but means i need to think about feedline length since i cant always get the pole exactly where i want it relative to the operating position.

anyone run a similar setup without a genny? part of me likes the idea of quiet ops and not dealing with fuel but i also dont want to be the guy who runs out of juice mid-exercise

yeah the 100ah lifepo4 should be totally fine for that. rough math — 60w out of the radio means maybe 12-13 amps draw at 12v when transmitting, probably half that on receive. if youre doing a typical net scenario youre not keyed up constantly so your average current is way lower than peak. 6-8 hours a day over two days, even with the laptop and signallink thrown in, you probably wont touch 50% depth of discharge total if youre not being careless.

the thing i would think about though is what happens if someone else needs power. always seems like there's one person at these exercises who shows up with a dead tablet or wants to charge their handheld. i usually bring a small 12v to usb panel just for that stuff so it doesnt come out of the main battery. keeps things clean.

on the antenna placement thing with the feedline — if youre using ladder line or open wire you have way more flexibility on where to put the pole relative to the rig, but if youre feeding it with coax just bring an extra 25-50ft and eat the small loss. better than fighting the geometry all day.

i ran almost the exact same question past myself before a simcomm last fall and ended up bringing both — the battery as primary and the generator in the truck as backup. never touched the genny. honestly it was kind of reassuring just knowing it was there but in practice the lifepo4 handled everything fine and like you said the quiet is really nice especially if youre doing voice ops and trying to copy weak signals.

one thing i didnt expect was how much the laptop sucked down compared to the radio. had a relatively modern thinkpad and it was still pulling like 45 watts under load. so factor that in if you havent already. might be worth running everything off a watt meter for an hour at home first just to see what youre actually dealing with before you commit.