so we've got a county-wide ARES exercise coming up and i've been tasked with setting up a portable HF station at the EOC annex site which is basically a parking lot with a picnic shelter and zero shore power nearby. been doing this for a few years but never had to run fully independent for an extended period — previous exercises were always somewhere with at least a 20amp circuit we could tap into.

current plan is running my IC-7300 with a Chameleon MPAS Lite vertical on a tripod, which usually works fine for portable ops. the antenna isnt my main concern honestly. what im trying to work out is the power chain. i've got a 100ah lithium (Bioenno) that i normally use for sota and that's great for a few hours but this exercise runs 8 hours and we're supposed to be transmitting periodically throughout, like check-ins every 30 min plus some traffic nets.

someone in the club suggested renting a small generator but i've never tried running radio gear off a generator and i'm a little worried about the noise. another guy said just get a second battery and run them in parallel. third option I was thinking was a folding solar panel to top off the Bioenno during the day since the exercise is outdoors and june weather here is usually sunny.

what would you guys actually do in this situation? i want something reliable but i dont want to drag a ton of gear out there either.

the generator noise thing is a real concern but honestly manageable if you pick the right one and run it with a little distance between it and the radio. i've used a Honda EU2200i at field day and a couple ARES deployments and with maybe 20-30 feet of cord and the exhaust pointed away you usually cant hear it in the receiver at all. the inverter generators are way cleaner than the old conventional ones — the EU2200i in particular puts out pretty solid sine wave and i've never had RFI issues with it. that said it is another piece of gear to lug around and fuel to manage.

honestly for your scenario i'd probably just do the second battery plus the solar panel and skip the genny. if you're running the 7300 at moderate power — say 50-75w — and only keying up for check-ins rather than continuous operation, two 100ah lithium packs should be more than enough headroom for 8 hours even without any solar contribution. the solar is just insurance and peace of mind. run them in parallel through a decent fused bus bar and you're basically set. keep the genny as a club resource you can call in if something goes sideways.

yeah the chameleon MPAS Lite is a solid choice for that kind of setup, ive used one at a few public service events. one thing i'd add — if the parking lot situation means you're on asphalt or concrete, make sure you're thinking about your ground situation with that antenna. i had a really frustrating afternoon once where i couldn't figure out why my SWR was all over the place and it turned out the tripod was just floating with no real RF ground reference. threw down like 4 radials on the pavement and taped them flat and it cleaned right up. probably not news to you but worth mentioning since it bit me once.

on the power thing i mostly agree with whatever the other guy said, two batteries plus solar is the low-drama answer. generators are fine but it's one more thing that can fail or run out of gas at a bad moment during an actual exercise evaluation.