so we've got a county ARES exercise coming up in about three weeks and i've been tasked with setting up the primary HF station at the EOC staging area which is basically a parking lot with nothing but a 120v outlet that may or may not actually work. last exercise that outlet was dead for the first two hours so im trying to figure out a backup plan that doesnt involve me running back to my truck every 20 minutes

right now im thinking either bring my honda eu2200i and just run everything off that, or go with a lifepo4 battery bank situation. the radio is an ic-7300 so figure 20-25 amps peak on transmit, mostly doing winlink and some voice on 40/80. probably 6-8 hours of operation with maybe 30% duty cycle on tx. i also need to power a laptop and a little fan cause this is july and it will be miserable

the generator option is obvious in terms of capacity but its loud and i hate dealing with the fuel and the 2200i isnt that quiet once it gets under load. the battery route is cleaner but im not sure a single 100ah lifepo4 gets me through the whole day comfortably with the laptop drawing too. was thinking maybe two batteries and a solar panel but finding a good mounting solution for the panel in a random parking lot is always kind of a pain

also separately - what are people doing for portable HF antennas in a situation where you cant put anything in the ground and have maybe 30 feet of horizontal space. was gonna bring my buddipole but honestly ive had mixed results with it on 40 and below

the eu2200i is actually pretty solid once you get used to it, i ran one for a 10 hour public service event last fall and it was fine, just keep it maybe 20-30 feet away from the operating position if you can and run a good extension cord. the noise issue is real but its manageable. fuel wise just bring an extra gallon jug, the tank on that thing is small

for the battery route though, two 100ah lifepo4 in parallel should be more than enough for what youre describing. 30% duty cycle on a 7300 youre probably averaging maybe 8-10 amps realistically, laptop maybe 3-4 more, fan another amp or two. rough math puts you well inside 100ah for 6 hours even without solar. the second battery is good peace of mind though and they aint that heavy if youre just loading from a car

on the antenna question, ive had decent luck with an endfed halfwave on a 31 foot fiberglass mast - the SOTAbeams ones are pretty packable. you can stake the mast with a camera tripod and some sand bags or just lean it against whatever structure is nearby and guy it with paracord. 40 works fine for me with a decent tuner, 80 is always a compromise on a short setup but what isnt

yeah the buddipole on 40 is kind of a known thing, its workable but you really need to spend time with the tuning and the counterpoise situation matters a lot more than people think when youre on the ground like that. ive basically stopped bringing mine for anything below like 20 meters unless i have a lot of time to mess with it

for a parking lot setup with no stakes i've been using a painter's pole - the extending fiberglass ones from the hardware store - zip tied to a traffic cone with some weight in it. ghetto but it works and costs like 12 bucks. throw an endfed or even just a random wire over it and use the car as a counterpoise sorta. not ideal but for emcomm purposes it gets the job done and setup is under 5 minutes which matters when things are already chaotic