so anyway ive been doing ARES stuff for about 6 years now and every deployment i kept showing up with something half-baked - wrong coax length, generator that wouldnt start cold, the usual nightmare. this past weekend we ran a full exercise and i think i finally got it together enough to write it up while its fresh.

running an IC-7300 off a Jackery 1000 for the first time instead of dragging the honda eu2200 everywhere and honestly for a 4-6 hour deployment the battery handled it no problem, maybe got down to 60% running 100W SSB with normal cycle rates. the honda stays in the truck now as backup and for anything longer than a day. the weight savings alone is worth it, that generator is not fun to haul across a parking lot at 0600.

antenna wise i finally committed to a Wolf River Coils silver bullet 1000 on a drive-on mount and it works way better than i expected for 40 and 80 which is what we actually need for regional stuff. tuning it is a bit fiddly if youre switching bands frequently but once you find your marks and put a sharpie on the coil its fine. ran a 9:1 unun to a random wire once for comparison and the coil just wins for repeatability when you need to be up fast.

only thing im still not happy with is the feedline situation, keeping 50ft of RG-8X in a bag without it turning into a rats nest is apparently beyond my abilities. anybody got a good solution that isnt just wrapping it on a cardboard tube because those always break in the truck.

the feedline thing - get yourself one of those plastic electrical cable reels, the kind with the hand crank. harbor freight used to sell them cheap. i cut mine down a little so it fits in a milk crate and the coax stays on there perfect. been doing that for maybe 3 years and no tangles. also it pays out way smoother than fighting a bag.

your battery setup sounds solid btw. i went a similar route but im using a pair of 100ah lithium batteries i built myself, bit more capacity but obviously more work to put together. for ARES stuff where you have a defined deployment window the commercial units like the Jackery make a lot of sense, plug and play and the other operators can figure it out without calling you over every 5 minutes.

I've had good luck with the RG-8X just using a figure-8 wrap on a piece of 4 inch PVC about 18 inches long, end caps glued on, and a couple velcro straps. holds shape in the truck and doesnt kink. Sounds dumb but it works better than anything I bought. The cardboard thing yeah that lasted about one deployment for me too lol.

One thing on the Wolf River - are you using the whip fully extended or shortened? I found mine really needed to be closer to the resonant length on 40 to get the SWR down cleanly, took me a while to realize I had the whip adjusted wrong and was fighting the coil for no reason. Your sharpie trick is smart, i should do that.