so we have a county ARES exercise coming up in about three weeks and im trying to figure out the best way to power everything without lugging our usual generator around. last time we ran a honda eu2200i and it was fine but honestly kind of overkill for what we were doing and the noise was annoying when trying to copy weak signals on 40m ssb.

our typical load is an IC-7300 running maybe 50-60w most of the time, a small laptop for logging, a couple of HTs on charge, and a little LED work light. ive been looking at the bioenno 100ah lithium pack or maybe just daisy chaining a couple of the 50ah ones i already have. rough math says we should be fine for 6-8 hours without any recharging but im not 100% sure im accounting for the laptop correctly.

antenna side is sorted i think — we're doing a linked dipole for 40/20 up on a 31ft spiderpole, feed with LMR-400 to keep losses down since the run is kinda long. maybe 40 feet from the mast to the operating position. just wondering if anyone's run a similar power setup and whether the lithium batteries handled the 7300's current draw okay on TX peaks.

yeah the 7300 at 50w is pulling maybe 10-11 amps on transmit peaks, idle is way less obviously. with a 100ah lithium you should be totally fine for a full day of moderate activity, those bioenno packs are solid ive had mine for 3 years no complaints. just make sure whatever you're using to charge the laptop doesn't have a crappy inverter or switching noise that gets into your audio — had that problem once with a cheap inverter and it took me forever to track down the buzz on receive.

one thing i would do is bring the generator anyway just in case, even if you dont plan to run it. three weeks out is not a lot of time to discover your batteries wont hold charge like they used to.

the linked dipole on a spiderpole setup is pretty much what we use for every exercise and it works great, we've done it on 80/40/20 with a 40ft jackite and it holds up fine in moderate wind. 40 feet of LMR-400 is a little heavy but yeah you'll appreicate the low loss especially if you're running modest power.

on the power question — i cant speak to the bioenno specifically but i will say dont underestimate how much the laptop draws if it's got a big screen or a dedicated GPU. some of those logging laptops people drag out are old chunky things that pull 40-50w by themselves. measure it with a watt meter before you commit to leaving the generator home, just tape the meter in line for a couple hours during a practice session and you'll know exactly what you're dealing with. kind of a pain but worth it to not get caught at hour five with dead batteries.