so ive been asked to help set up a portable field communications station for our county ARES group and honestly im a little overwhelmed by where to start. we've done simplex stuff before and i've done some SOTA activations but nothing at this scale where we're expected to run HF, have backup power, and keep things going for potentially 24+ hours during an exercise or actual event.

right now the plan is to run an IC-7300 and maybe a second rig for VHF/UHF coordination. for antennas i was thinking a 40m/80m fan dipole thrown up in whatever trees are available, or maybe an EFHW with a 9:1 unun because those go up faster. the problem is we never know what the site looks like ahead of time so im trying to build something flexible.

power is the part that has me most confused. we have a small Honda eu2200i which i know is clean enough for the radios, but im not sure how long we can realistically run it before fuel becomes a problem. does anyone have a rough idea of how much fuel that thing eats at like 25-30% load just running the 7300 and some ancillary stuff? also wondering if its worth adding a battery bank in between so the generator isnt running constantly and we can go quiet when needed.

any thoughts from people who've actually done this kind of thing appreciated, ive been reading a lot but real world experience is different

the eu2200i is a solid choice and yeah at 25-30% load youre looking at something like 0.1 to maybe 0.13 gallons per hour depending on actual draw. so a full tank is around 0.95 gallons, do the math and you get maybe 7-8 hours if youre lucky and not running it hard. we always bring at least two 5 gallon cans for anything longer than a half day exercise and rotate fuel carefully so nothing goes stale.

the battery buffer idea is actually really smart and not just for noise reasons. we use a 100ah lifepo4 with a decent DC-DC charger between the generator and the radios and it means the genny can run at a more efficient load to top off the battery and then shut down for an hour or two without you losing anything. the 7300 at 100w is pulling maybe 20-22 amps transmitting so your runtime math on just battery alone isnt great but for receive and occasional tx its fine.

for antennas honestly the EFHW wins on deployment speed every single time, especially at a site you've never seen before. just make sure your 9:1 unun can handle the power and isnt one of the cheap ones that saturates, learned that the hard way during a field day a few years back. if you have the time and a good site the fan dipole is more predictable but the EFHW gets you on the air faster which matters in actual activations.

one thing nobody ever mentions until its too late - run the generator away from where people are working, like way further than you think you need to. carbon monoxide is no joke and ive seen setups where the genny is like 15 feet from the operating position with the exhaust pointed the wrong way. also the eu2200i is quiet but it still radiates some rf hash, putting distance between it and the radios helps a lot and use good shielded coax runs.

we did an exercise last fall where we had about 80 feet of coax between the operating tent and the antennas and honestly it was worth it just to keep the noise floor down. lost maybe half an s-unit compared to shorter runs but the reduction in generator hash more than made up for it.