so we've got a county-level ARES exercise coming up in about 6 weeks and im tasked with putting together the primary field comms station. ive done portable ops before but never at this scale where we actually need to sustain it for 12+ hours with multiple operators cycling through. figured id post here and see what other people have run into.

current plan is to bring the IC-7300 as the primary HF rig, maybe a 2m/70cm mobile rig for local coordination. antenna-wise i was thinking a linked dipole on a 31ft jackite pole for HF and a jpole or small yagi for VHF. the dipole has worked fine at field day but im not 100% sure about the feedline situation since we'll be farther from any structures and i need to figure out how to stake everything properly without trees nearby.

the big question is power. our EC wants us to run the genny as primary and batteries as backup but i feel like thats backwards - i'd rather run off a good LiFePO4 bank and only fire up the genny when we need to recharge. the noise and fumes from the genny just seem like they'd cause more problems than they're worth especially if we're trying to run near other operators. anyone done sustained field comms for that long off batteries alone? what size bank are you talking realistically for 12 hours of HF with moderate TX duty cycle?

also open to antenna suggestions if you think there's something better than the linked dipole for a situation where we might be changing bands a lot. we'll probably be on 40 and 80 mostly but might need 20 for any longer hauls.

done a lot of ARES activations and yeah i totally get the genny vs battery debate, happens every single time. for 12 hours on the 7300 youre probably looking at average current draw maybe 8-10A if you're not keying up constantly, so call it 100-120Ah realistically with some headroom. two 100Ah LiFePO4 batteries in parallel would probably get you through it but thats cutting it close if you have the VHF rig running too and people are charging phones and whatever else always happens at these things.

what we ended up doing for our county exercises is running a small inverter genny - we use a honda eu2200i - just to float the batteries the whole time at low load rather than running the radios directly off it. quieter than most gennys, fuel efficient, and you dont get the weird noise issues you sometimes get when rigs are directly on genny power without a good filter inline. keeps the battery bank topped and gives you true backup if a battery decides to be a battery. the genny sits downwind like 30 feet away and honestly you forget its running most of the time.

for the antenna situation without trees the jackite pole is the right call. i'd stake it with a ground anchor stake and three guy lines minimum, 40mph gusts will absolutely clown you otherwise. linked dipole is fine, maybe look at a SOTA beams linked dipole if you want something that's quick to reconfigure between bands, otherwise just make sure your 40/80 links are well labeled because at 2am someone will mess it up guaranteed.

the feedline thing bites people more than the antenna choice honestly. if you're running coax any real distance from the pole to the operating position, especially on 80m, just make sure you're not using RG-58 for more than maybe 50 feet or youre throwing away signal you don't have to spare. RG-8X or LMR-400 depending on how serious you are and how heavy you want to haul stuff.

also - and this might be out of scope for your exercise but worth knowing - if there's any chance you need to move the station mid-exercise, the jackite pole setup can be a pain to break down fast. ive started using a heavy duty tripod base for mine instead of ground stakes just because striking camp goes so much quicker. just something to think about depending on how the exercise scenario is scripted.