so ive been putting together a go-kit situation for our county ARES group and we have a deployment exercise coming up saturday and im trying to nail down the power side of things before then. right now im running an IC-7300 and a separate 2m/70cm rig (the TM-V71) plus a raspberry pi for winlink and all that jazz so the draw isnt crazy but its not nothing either.

the question im wrestling with is whether to bring the honda eu2200i we have in the club trailer or just run off a 100ah lithium battery with a 200w panel. last time we did this we ran the genny for about 4 hours and honestly the noise was a pain especially since we were near a command post and people kept asking us to move it further away. but the solar thing makes me nervous if its overcast and we end up running all day into the evening.

also on the antenna side im thinking the chameleon MPAS lite on a painters pole for HF and maybe the rollup jpole for the VHF stuff. anyone done a similar setup and found a better combo or know of issues with the chameleon in a quick deploy situation? i feel like the feedpoint connection on mine is a little finicky.

the battery plus solar combo is honestly way more practical for that kind of load than people give it credit for. i run a similar setup with a 120ah battleborn and a renogy 200w panel and ive kept an IC-7300 going all day at moderate power levels without sweating it too much, even with some cloud cover. the key is you gotta actually watch your state of charge and not let yourself get chatty on 80m at 100 watts for hours lol. if you're worried about evening ops just bring the genny as a backup but dont plan around it being your primary - the noise complaint thing is real and it just creates friction you dont need during an exercise.

on the chameleon feedpoint thing, yeah that SMA or whatever they use can get a little flaky if you havent been babying the connector. i put a tiny bit of dialectric grease on mine and that helped. also make sure the counterpoise wires are actually making good contact, ive seen that be the issue more than the main connector honestly.

painters pole and a rollup jpole is basically my entire portable life at this point, good combo. for HF though i actually switched away from the chameleon stuff to just a linked dipole i made myself - bit more setup time but way less fussing around with the feedpoint and i know exactly whats going on with it. something to consider if you end up frustrated with the MPAS.

the genny vs battery thing really just depends on how disciplined your team is about power budget. most ARES groups i've seen end up running gennys because someone always wants to run more equipment than planned and the battery math goes out the window fast.