so we have a county-level ARES exercise coming up and im trying to figure out the power situation before i commit to anything. the plan is to run two stations — one HF (probably my IC-7300) and a VHF/UHF station for local coordination, likely just a 2m FM rig, nothing fancy. setup will be in a park, no shore power obviously.

my buddy wants to bring his honda EU2200i and just run everything off that but i feel like for a 4-5 hour exercise thats overkill and kind of annoying to haul, plus fuel. ive been leaning toward running the 7300 off a 100ah lifepo4 and the 2m radio off a separate smaller battery just to keep things clean. the IC-7300 at 100w draws what, around 20-21 amps on transmit? so depending on duty cycle i think the 100ah should be more than fine for a day but wanted to sanity check that with people who actually do this stuff regularly.

antenna side im thinking a buddipole for the HF work since we might need 40m and maybe 20m depending on skip conditions that day, and just a mag mount or a jpole for the VHF side. open ground, no trees to speak of unfortunately so a wire antenna is probably out unless i bring a mast which is getting complicated fast.

anyone done similar setups, any gotchas i should know about before i show up and look like an idiot in front of the whole group

the lifepo4 plan makes sense to me, the EU2200i is great but yeah for 4-5 hours with reasonable duty cycle its probably unnecessary weight. i ran my 7300 through a full 8 hour simulated emergency exercise off a 100ah battleborn last fall and still had like 60% left, and we were actually pretty active on 40m most of the day. key thing is watch your resting voltage if you havent used the pack in a while before the exercise, lifepo4 sits weird sometimes and a partial charge can fool you.

one thing id add — bring a small solar panel even if you dont think you need it. even a 100w rigid panel on a tiltable stand just sitting there topping things off is nice peace of mind and the weight isnt terrible. i use a renogy 100w with a victron 75/15 mppt and it just runs in the background, barely have to think about it.

buddipole for 40 and 20 is fine, just give yourself time to tune it. that thing can be finicky if youre rushed and the coil settings for 40 are not always obvious from the chart. id do a backyard test run before the exercise if you havent already, seriously.

jpole for vhf is solid, i use a roll-up jpole made from 300 ohm twinlead that fits in my bag. works better than any mag mount ive used in open field conditions because you can get it up on a painters pole or camera tripod and get it 10-12 feet off the ground easy. mag mounts need a ground plane and if youre not on a vehicle roof they kinda suffer. just something to consider.

also depending on how far you need to hit the repeater, 2m at even 25 watts should be fine for a county exercise so you might not even need to push the VHF rig hard at all, saves battery too if youre trying to avoid the genny situation.