so after about two years of doing this wrong i think i finally have a setup that actually works for extended field ops. been doing a lot of ARES stuff lately and we had a deployment exercise last month that really exposed some gaps in what i was doing before.

the big thing was power. i was running a cheap 2000w inverter generator and it was causing all kinds of noise on HF, like S7-S8 on some bands even with the generator 30 feet away. switched to a Honda EU2200i and the difference was night and day. yeah its twice the price but the inverter topology just plays nicer with radio gear. also finally got around to properly bonding everything to a common ground point instead of just daisy chaining the grounds and that helped too.

for the antenna i gave up on trying to use my home station yagi on a tilt-over mast because that thing is a nightmare to set up alone. now running a Chameleon MPAS 2.0 on a 20ft jackite pole and i can have it up in maybe 15 minutes by myself. its not going to win any contests but for actual emergency communications its totally adequate and the NVIS pattern works really well for the distances we're usually talking about.

one thing i still havent fully figured out is battery backup for when the genny needs to go down for refueling. running a 100ah lifepo4 through a dc-dc charger off the genny while its running, then switching over to battery only. the switchover is a bit clunky and i dropped comms for like 45 seconds last time. anyone dealt with this, is there a cleaner way to handle the transition?

the switchover thing is a real pain, ive been there. what you want is basically an automatic transfer switch or at minimum a diode oring setup so both sources are kind of connected simultaneously and the higher voltage one just wins. some of the Bioenno or similar lifepo4 chargers have a pass-through mode that helps with this but it depends on the charger. i ended up using a West Mountain Radio RigRunner with a couple of Anderson powerpole inputs wired through some schottky diodes, not elegant but it works and there's no gap in power. the diode drop means you lose maybe half a volt but at 13.8v that's not really a problem.

also yeah the EU2200i is just the answer for field HF work, full stop. the older non-inverter gennys are basically noise machines on anything below 30mhz. i tried filtering the heck out of one with ferrites and a line filter and still couldnt get it below S4 on 40m. some things you just cant fix after the fact.

good writeup. we did something similar for our county ARES group and the jackite pole with a random wire or EFHW has become kind of the standard recommendation because anyone can set it up without much practice. the chameleon stuff is nice but honestly a 49:1 unun and some wire gets you 90% of the way there for a lot less money if budget is a concern for newer folks coming into emcomm.

one thing i'd add about the generator noise, your bonding and grounding comment is underrated. ive seen people drop several S units just by running a proper RF ground and making sure the generator frame, the radio chassis, and the antenna counterpoise are all tied together properly. people overlook that and then blame the generator when half the problem is floating grounds all over the place.