so ive been putting together a go-kit style setup for a county ARES exercise this weekend and i keep going back and forth on the power situation. right now im planning to run my IC-7300 and a laptop for winlink plus maybe a second vhf radio, total draw is probably around 25-30 amps when the HF is transmitting at 100w.

the thing is i have a honda eu2200i that would handle it easy but hauling that thing plus gas to a park location seems like a pain, and everyone keeps telling me just run lifepo4 but my 50ah battery probably isnt gonna last the whole 8 hour exercise if im doing any real traffic volume. i do have a 100ah agm in the truck but that means running a long cable or leaving the truck close which isnt always gonna be an option depending on where they set up the command post.

has anyone done back to back exercises like this and found a sweet spot? i feel like im overthinking it but i also dont want to be the guy whose radio dies halfway through a simulated disaster scenario. also what are people using for portable antennas in a field setting where you cant stake anything — thinking about a vertical on a drive-on mount but not sure how that plays on 40m for regional nets

honestly the eu2200i isnt that bad to haul if you have a hand truck, i bring mine to every SET and nobody has ever complained about the noise since you can throttle those down pretty quiet. that said for 8 hours with that load id probably say a 100ah lifepo4 is borderline but doable if your transmit duty cycle isnt insane — winlink bursts are short so its not like youre keying up for 5 minutes straight.

one thing i did for our last exercise was parallel my 50ah and a 30ah battery i had sitting around, kept things going fine. for the antenna situation, a resonant vertical on a tripod works ok but dont expect miracles on 40m with no radials down. i usually try to get a wire up if theres any trees around, even a sloper off a 30ft fiberglass mast does way better than a base-loaded vertical for that band. the drive-on mounts are fine for 2m/70cm but 40m really wants something more.

yeah 50ah lifepo4 for a full day at 100w is gonna be tight depending how much traffic you pass. im running a 120ah epoch battery now and it basically laughs at a full day exercise. not cheap but i got tired of rationing.

for the antenna — if theres literally no stakes allowed ive had decent luck with a non-resonant wire just draped over whatever is around, fence line, bushes, doesnt matter, and let the tuner deal with it. ugly but it works and setup is like 3 minutes. for an actual vertical on 40m with no radials youre looking at a pretty lossy system, at least throw a few 16 foot wires on the ground even if theyre just coiled up awkwardly, makes a noticeable difference