so we have a countywide ARES exercise coming up in about 5 weeks and i've been tasked with putting together a portable comms kit for one of the outlying sites, basically a park pavilion with no shore power. been doing this for a few years but honestly our group has always just kind of winged the power side of things and it's caused problems before, generator ran out of fuel at a bad time during the last SET, that kind of thing.

my plan right now is to bring the IC-7300 for HF backup comms and a TM-V71A for local VHF/UHF. antenna wise i'm thinking a linked dipole for HF strung up between a couple of masts, maybe 40/80m since those are the bands the state net uses, and a jpole or small yagi for the V/U side pointed toward the EOC about 12 miles away.

for power im torn between running a small inverter generator like the Honda EU2200i or just going full battery with a LiFePO4 pack. the exercise is supposed to run about 8 hours. my rough math says the 7300 on receive plus TX at maybe 50% duty cycle plus the V71 and some laptop time is maybe 15-20ah? but im honestly not confident in that estimate. anybody done something similar and know what your actual consumption looked like over a full day

your 15-20ah estimate is pretty optimistic i think, especially if youre running the laptop. the 7300 alone sitting in receive is something like 1.5-2A, TX at 100w is closer to 20A and even at 50w youre pulling maybe 10-12. if you average out a realistic traffic net with maybe 20-30% TX time you might land around 4-5A average for just the radio. add the V71 and a laptop and over 8 hours that could easily be 50+ah depending on what the laptop is doing.

i run a 100ah LiFePO4 (its a battleborn) for ARES stuff and for a single-radio HF setup doing a 6-8 hour shift it usually comes back around 70-80% so thats roughly 20-30ah used but i'm not running two radios and a computer. honestly for what you're describing i'd want at least a 100ah pack, maybe two smaller ones you can swap or parallel, and the EU2200i as backup not primary. that thing is dead quiet and sips fuel, you could run it a few hours to top off the battery and then shut it down during nets. works really well in practice.

for the antenna side, linked dipole is solid for 40/80 but make sure you actually have the height to make 80 work at that site, a low 80m dipole is gonna be mostly NVIS which might actually be fine for in-state contacts but if the state net is 300+ miles out youll want it as high as you can get it. also whatever masts you bring, practice setting them up alone or with one person before the exercise because it always takes longer than you think and exercieses have a way of starting before youre ready lol