so we've got a county-wide ARES exercise coming up and i'm trying to nail down my portable setup. last time I ran everything off a 100ah LiFePO4 and it was fine for a few hours but we ended up running almost 8 hours straight and i was sweating bullets by hour five watching the voltage drop.

this time i'm debating whether to just bring the little Honda eu2200i I have in the garage. thing is, it's overkill for just running an IC-7300 and a laptop and maybe a small fan, and lugging it out to a field site is kind of a pain. the battery is so much cleaner and quieter especially if we're near actual served agency folks who dont want to hear a generator running.

antenna wise i'm thinking about putting up either my EFHW on a 31ft fiberglass mast or maybe just the buddipole since it breaks down faster. the EFHW gets out better in my experience but takes longer to tune and get up properly. site is a parking lot adjacent to a park so no trees to sling anything into unfortunately.

anyone run extended field ops like this and figured out a good balance between battery and generator? thinking maybe i just bring both and use the honda to top off the battery if needed rather than running everything straight off it. or is that dumb and i should just get a bigger battery bank

the honda to top-off approach is exactly what our group settled on after a few painful exercises. we run a 200ah LiFePO4 as primary and the generator only kicks on if we drop below like 50%. keeps the noise down 90% of the time and you still have the safety net. only thing is make sure your charger is actually putting out meaningful amps — some of the cheaper ones will run the genny for an hour and barely move the needle. we use a Victron IP65 25a charger and it's solid, actually moves the battery pretty quick.

on the antenna, if it's a parking lot i'd go EFHW on the mast every time. buddipole is great but you'll be messing with it all day if conditions shift and people start asking you to change bands. EFHW just sits there and works, throw a counterpoise on the ground and you're done. only real pain is the initial setup like you said but once it's up it's up.

yeah honestly the dual power source thing is smart. one thing i'll add — watch your RFI situation if you do run the generator at the same time as receiving. my eu2000 (older model) was putting garbage all over 40m when it was under light load, something about the inverter frequency I think. had to run it harder or just switch to battery for actual comms. the 2200i might be better i dunno but worth checking before the exercise not during it lol