so our ARES group has a county-wide exercise coming up and i've been tasked with setting up the primary HF station at the EOC staging area. we're going out to a park about 2 miles from the actual EOC and running a field comms node, basically just a liaison station on 40 and 80m for traffic handling plus some VHF for local nets.

my question is mostly about power. ive been going back and forth on whether to bring the honda eu2200i or just run off a big battery bank. the rig is an IC-7300 which at full 100w is drawing maybe 20 amps, and we could be running 6-8 hours with maybe 30-40% actual transmit time so not continuous key-down or anything. i've done the math and a 100ah lifepo4 should cover it but my elmer keeps insisting we should have the generator as backup at minimum.

for the antenna i'm leaning toward the chaparral... wait no, the end-fed halfwave on a 31 foot jackite pole, thrown up as a sloper toward roughly northeast since thats where most of our check-ins will be coming from. last time i tried to put up a dipole at a park it took forever and the trees werent cooperating.

anyone done something similar and have opinions on the generator question? also wondering if the sloper orientation even matters that much at typical NVIS distances, probably talking 50-200 miles here

for 6-8 hours at that duty cycle the lifepo4 is honestly fine, i'd say bring the generator but dont plan on needing it. the eu2200i is great but it's also one more thing to fuel, one more thing that can throw rf noise into your receiver, and one more thing to haul. for an exercise that isnt going to run overnight just do the battery and call it done. if you have a 100ah pack and youre genuinely only at 30-40% tx you wont even come close to draining it unless something goes sideways.

the sloper question though — yeah it does matter a bit at NVIS ranges but probably not as much as you're thinking. at 40m NVIS you're basically shooting straight up anyway so the horizontal component of the sloper doesn't buy you much directionality. the low angle stuff is where you'd really notice it. i'd just get it up as high and as conveniently as possible and not stress the orientation.

we ran almost this exact setup at a simulated emergency test last fall, ic-7300 off a bioenno 100ah lifepo4 with a jackite pole and EFHW. ran 7 hours no problem, battery was at like 60% when we packed up. only thing i'd add is bring a small panel if the exercise is in daylight, even a 50w panel can offset your receive current and basically make the battery last forever for that kind of ops tempo.

one thing that bit us — noise from a nearby vendor's generator at the park. had S7 noise across 40m for a couple hours in the afternoon. nothing you can do about that really but worth having a plan to move the antenna feedpoint if you can, putting some distance between you and whatever else is running there.