so ive been putting together a field kit for ARES activations and im running into the usual power headache. right now im leaning toward bringing the honda eu2200i but honestly for a single HF station running maybe 100w it feels like overkill and the thing weighs like 47lbs which is fine for a vehicle deployment but we had a situation last month where we had to hike about a quarter mile to the actual command post location and that was not fun.

the alternative ive been messing with is a 100ah lifepo4 battery with a 200w panel but the panel is big and floppy and getting it positioned right at an unknown site is always kind of a crapshoot depending on trees and time of day. the battery alone does fine for a few hours but if were talking a 12+ hour activation i get nervous about running the ic-7300 plus a laptop plus maybe a 2m mobile that somehow always ends up in the kit even when i say its not going in the kit.

antenna side ive mostly sorted - got a 40/80m NVIS setup with a linked dipole and some surplus military masts that break down pretty small. the real question is whether anyone has done the math or just has real world experience on how long a 100ah lithium actually lasts running HF at moderate power with periodic tx and whether i should just suck it up and bring the generator anyway

the math works out okay if you're not going crazy on tx. ic-7300 at 100w is pulling maybe 20-22a on transmit but if you're doing NVIS traffic handling you're probably not keying up continuously - realistically maybe 30-40% duty cycle depending on the net. receive is way lower, like 2-3a. a laptop adds maybe another 3-4a depending on what it's doing. so rough average might be somewhere around 8-10a depending on activity. 100ah lithium you dont want to drain past maybe 80% so you've got effective 80ah... call it 8 hours comfortable, maybe 10 if things stay slow.

for a 12 hour activation with that load i'd say bring the panel. even if the positioning isnt perfect you'll be adding something back in during daylight and it takes the edge off the anxiety. the generator is the right call if you're vehicle-adjacent the whole time but you already know that. one thing worth looking at is the bioenno or dakota lithium slim profile packs, they're easier to strap to a cart than the chunky boxes.

yeah the 2m radio that always ends up in the kit, i feel that deeply. mine is somehow always in there too along with like three feedlines i dont remember packing.

honestly for 12 hour emcomm stuff we've just gone back to the generator for the main station and kept a smaller lipo just for handheld charging and backup. the weight tradeoff sucks but reliability anxiety during an actual activation is worse imo. last drill we had a generator go down and spent 45 minutes troubleshooting a carb issue which was its own special kind of fun, so there's that side of it too. i've had pretty good luck with the yamaha ef2000is for weight vs output but it's still not exactly a backpacking item. the linked dipole setup sounds solid for NVIS though, what heights are you getting on the ends