so im putting together a portable setup for a county ARES exercise this weekend and ive been going back and forth on the power situation for a few days now. the site we're using doesnt have shore power so were looking at either running a generator or going battery with solar backup. my main concern is the generator noise — both RF and acoustic — because were gonna be trying to work some digital modes (js8call mostly, maybe some winlink) and last time someone brought a cheap harbor freight genny to one of these things the noise floor was just brutal, like S7-S8 on everything.

we have access to a honda eu2200i which ive used before and its pretty quiet electrically if you bond it right, but its also kind of overkill for what we need if were mostly running a 100w hf rig and a laptop. thinking about supplementing with a 100ah lifepo4 and a small renogy panel to top it off during the day. that way we can run the generator for maybe an hour in the morning to top the battery and then shut it down during actual operating periods.

antenna side im planning on a buddipole in vertical config for 40m and maybe stringing an ocf dipole between some trees if the site cooperates. anyone done something similar for an emcomm exercise? curious if the buddipole vertical on 40 is actually useable or if its just gonna be a compromise on compromise at that point

the eu2200i is honestly the right call if you can get your hands on it, the inverter-based output is way cleaner than a conventional generator and with a decent ferrite choke on the power leads you should be fine. i bonded mine to a ground rod at a field day site last year and the noise was basically negligible. the hybrid approach you're describing — charge in the morning, operate on battery — is exactly what our group does for extended deployments and it works really well. you can usually stretch that 100ah lifepo4 a lot further than you'd think if you're not transmitting 100% duty cycle, which on js8call you wont be anyway.

on the buddipole question, yeah a vertical on 40 is gonna be a compromise but it's a useable one. the loading coils do their job and if you can stake out a few radials — even just 4 or 5 of them thrown on the ground — it makes a noticeable difference over just the tripod mount alone. the ocf dipole in the trees will outperform it if you can get it up at a decent height, even 25-30 feet makes a big difference on 40. id use the buddipole as your backup or for a different band honestly, maybe set it up on 20 while the dipole covers 40.

yeah the generator rf noise thing is real and it bites people all the time. even the honda's arent perfect, i had one at a site where someone had run an extension cord across a wet field and the ground loop was causing all kinds of weirdness. ended up putting a 1:1 choke balun right at the rig power input and that helped a lot more than i expected.

one thing i'd throw in — if you're doing winlink at any point during the exercise, test your audio chain before you get to the site. i cant tell you how many times ive seen guys show up to emcomm events with a perfectly good radio and a perfectly good laptop and the soundcard interface is either picking up generator noise or just configured wrong and they spend an hour troubleshooting instead of communicating. boring advice but it's saved us more than once