so ive been putting together a go-kit style setup for a local ARES exercise this weekend and im going back and forth on the power situation. the event is about 6 hours of actual operating time, maybe more if things run long, and ill be running an IC-7300 plus a small laptop for winlink and maybe a second VHF radio if needed.

right now i have a 100ah LiFePO4 battery that i picked up last year and it's been solid for shorter stuff but im not sure if thats gonna cut it for a full day especially if i end up running higher power on HF. ive also got a 2000w inverter genny that i could bring but honestly it feels like overkill and the noise thing is always a headache at these events, people complain and then you gotta move it far enough away that the extension cord situation becomes its own problem.

the antenna side is pretty settled, im going with a linked dipole for 40/80 and maybe 20 if i can get it high enough, center fed with some cheap coax i need to probably replace at some point. support is a 31ft spiderbeam pole which has been great. thinking about rigging it as an inverted V off the pole.

anyway the main thing im trying to figure out is whether that 100ah battery is realistically gonna do 6+ hours with that radio load or if i should just suck it up and bring the genny. anyone run similar setups and have a feel for the actual draw?

the 7300 at 100w is pulling somewhere around 20-22 amps on transmit, but if your duty cycle is reasonable like you're doing a lot of net check-ins and passing traffic rather than contesting, your average draw ends up way lower. I run a similar rig on a 100ah LiFePO4 for EMCOMM exercises and typically come home with 40-50% left after 5-6 hours. the laptop is probably your sneaky power hog depending on what you're running it on - some of those things pull 3-4 amps through an inverter and that adds up.

if you drop to 50w you probably wont notice a difference for most field work and it helps a lot. id leave the genny in the truck as backup and see how the battery does. worst case you go get it, but most likely you wont need it. also worth sticking a watt meter inline just so you can keep an eye on things rather than guessing.

the noise thing with generators is real, been there. we had one exercise where somebody parked a honda eu2200 about 15 feet from the operating position and it was getting into everything, ended up being a ground loop issue more than actual RF but still a pain to sort out mid-event.

one thing worth thinking about with the inverted V off the spiderbeam - if the terrain is at all uneven watch your guy lines, i lost a pole last spring because the ground was softer than it looked and i hadnt staked it properly. 31ft of fiberglass coming down on your feedline is not a great time. might be obvious but yeah. good luck with the exercise