so ive been putting together a portable field communications kit for the past few months and i think i finally have something that actually works but man the power side of things has been a headache from the start

running an IC-7300 in the field which i know some people think is overkill for portable work but its what i have and it does the job fine. antenna wise im using a Chameleon MPAS 2.0 which has been solid on 40 and 20, kind of mediocre on 80 but whatever. i set it up on a 17ft telescoping mast last weekend for a RACES exercise and it held up even with some wind

the problem is power. i started with a 100ah lithium (actually a Battleborn) and that works okay for a few hours at low power but when im running 100 watts for any length of time it drains faster than id like for an all day deployment. so i picked up a cheap 2000 watt inverter generator from harbor freight and honestly it runs the battery charger fine but its SO loud. like embarrassingly loud. like people at the exercise kept looking over at me

has anyone found a good middle ground here? i dont want to spend honda eu2200 money right now but the predator is just too loud for any kind of real deployment near other operators or in a residential area. and before anyone says it -- i know i could just bring a second battery but id rather have a charging solution running

yeah the predator generators are loud, thats just kind of what they are. the eu2200 is genuinely worth it if you do this stuff regularly, ive had mine for like 6 years and it just works. but i get it, its real money.

one thing worth looking at is the Champion 2000W inverter generator, its not quite as quiet as the honda but its in a different league than the harbor freight stuff and you can usually find them around $400-450 on sale. i ran one for two seasons before i finally got the honda and it was pretty decent. the parallel capability is nice too if you ever need more headroom for a bigger radio setup or to run a second station.

also -- and maybe you've already thought about this -- at 100w the 7300 is drawing what, maybe 20-22 amps? if your deployment is say 8 hours and you're not transmitting constantly the 100ah battery should honestly be getting you through most of a day depending on your duty cycle. are you actually running out or is it more of a range anxiety thing

the mast setup with the MPAS is pretty much what i run too, that antenna is underrated for how fast you can get it up. i did an emcomm drill last spring and had a decent 40m signal going in like 8 minutes from pulling up which was nice.

on the generator noise thing -- some guys in our group have started using those jackery or bluetti power stations as a kind of buffer. you run the generator to charge the power station and the radio runs off the power station, and you can actually shut the genny off for periods when you dont need to recharge. means you're not running it constantly which helps a lot with noise and fuel. obivously its adding another piece of equipment but for a fixed site deployment it works out okay