so we have a county ARES exercise coming up in about six weeks and im trying to nail down the power situation before i commit to hauling everything out there. last time we ran into issues because somebody brought a generator that was way too loud for the site we ended up at, and we were getting RF noise on pretty much everything above 40m which was a nightmare for the HF net we were supposed to be supporting.

my current thinking is to run a pair of 100ah lifepo4 batteries through a 30a RIGrunner for the main station — IC-7300 plus a laptop for logging and maybe a packet TNC — and only fire up the generator if we're going to be there past like hour six or seven. the generator would charge the batts and run the bigger stuff. does this sound sane or am i underestimating how fast that 7300 will chew through 200ah if we're doing a lot of transmitting

also the antenna situation is still kind of unresolved. we have a buddipole but honestly i've never loved it for HF, it works but feels like youre always fighting the tuning. someone suggested just throwing up an EFHW with a 9:1 unun and using a random length of wire, which i've done at home but never portable in a field with no trees nearby. we might have to use a tripod and push-up mast situation which i've not really done before. anyone have a go-to setup for that kind of thing that doesn't take 45 minutes to assemble

the power math is pretty straightforward if you know your duty cycle. the 7300 at 100w is pulling maybe 20-22 amps on transmit, but if you're doing a net and not just keying down constantly you might average out closer to 8-10 amps over an hour depending on how much you're actually TX vs RX. so 200ah should be fine for a 6-7 hour op if you're not going full bore the whole time. add the laptop and TNC and call it maybe 12-13 amps average. you'll be fine. i'd still bring the generator though because the last thing you want is to be babysitting voltage levels when you're supposed to be running traffic.

on the RF noise from generators — inverter generators are night and day compared to the old conventional ones. we've been using a Honda EU2200i for two years now and it's basically dead quiet on the bands. pricey but worth it if you're doing this more than once a year. some guys run a ferrite choke on the power lead from the genny just as extra insurance and that seems to help if you get any residual noise.

yeah the buddipole thing — i feel that. they're fine for what they are but the tuning is fiddly and if the wind picks up at all you're back to square one. for the mast situation with no trees, we went to a 33ft spiderbeam fiberglass mast with a small ground anchor, takes maybe 10 minutes once you've done it a couple times. we run a linked EFHW off the top, the link lets you switch between 40 and 20 without retuning which is nice for a deployment where you dont know what bands will be open.

the 9:1 unun with a random wire works but you really want a decent tuner in the loop and some radials on the ground, even just 4 or 5 short ones makes a difference on the noise floor. we skipped the radials once to save time and paid for it all afternoon.