so we had a county ARES exercise last weekend and my portable setup just did not cooperate the way i expected. ive been running a IC-7300 off a 100ah LiFePO4 for a while now at home but decided to bring the whole thing out to the field and man there were way more variables than i accounted for.

first problem was the generator. borrowed a honda eu2200i from a club member and it ran fine but i was getting a ton of RFI on 40m, like S7-S8 noise floor just garbage. i know the inverter generators are supposed to be cleaner than the old brush types but this thing was brutal. ended up having to run on battery only which was fine for the exercise duration but not a real solution if we're talking 12+ hour activations.

second thing was the antenna. i had a buddipole set up which i've used a bunch of times but the ground at the park was basically rock under about 2 inches of grass so i couldnt stake anything properly. the tripod kept wanting to tip in the wind and i was babysitting it half the time instead of actually operating. thinking about a more stable base or maybe going to a NVIS wire antenna on a couple of jackite poles instead.

anyone else dealt with the generator RFI thing? is it just about bonding and ferrites or is there something more fundamental going on. feels like there should be a cleaner solution than just not using the generator at all.

the eu2200i RFI issue is pretty well documented actually. the problem is usually the ground — or lack thereof. most people just plug in and go but those inverter gens have a floating neutral and depending on your coax run and antenna setup you can create a really effective noise antenna out of the whole thing. what worked for me was running a 6 foot ground rod right next to the generator and bonding the gen frame to it, then also bonding that to the radio ground. made a huge difference on 40 and 80. also wrapping the power cable through a mix31 toroid a few times right at the radio end helped knock down whatever was still getting through. ferrites alone without the actual ground bond didnt do much for me.

the buddipole base thing is real too, that tripod is fine for calm days but any wind and youre fighting it. i switched to using a camera tripod sandbag on the base and it helped but the jackite poles with a simple inverted V dipole is honestly way more stable for real emcomm work. less to go wrong.

yeah the generator noise thing got me too at a SOTA activation a while back, different context but same headache. ended up just not using it. for anything under like 6-8 hours the LiFePO4 is honestly the move anyway, a 100ah at the 7300's typical draw you've got plenty of runway especially if youre not running full power the whole time. if you really need the gen for longer stuff maybe look at running it further away from the station and using a longer dc cable — ive heard guys run 50+ feet of 10 gauge and just treat the gen as a remote charger only, keep the radio on battery the whole time. havent tried it myself but in theory you isolate most of the conducted noise that way and the radiated stuff drops off with distance.