so we have a county-level exercise coming up and im trying to figure out the power situation before i haul everything out. last time we ran a honda eu2200i for the whole event and it worked fine but it was loud as hell and we burned through more gas than i expected for basically just running an ic-7300 and a laptop. thinking about going battery this time, at least for the radio side.

currently have a 100ah lifepo4 that i use for portable stuff and honestly for a 4-6 hour exercise it should be fine if im not running the 7300 wide open. usually keep it at 50-60 watts during exercises anyway. my question is more about the antenna situation - we're going to a park with decent tree cover so i was thinking a linked dipole up in the trees, probably 40/80 config since thats what the NTS nets are on around here. anyone have thoughts on the feedline length situation? i keep going back and forth on whether to bring 100ft of LMR-400 or just use the lighter RG-8X and eat a bit more loss on 80.

also open to any other portable antenna ideas if someone has something that sets up faster. the inverted vee with a push-up mast works but getting the apex up 30 feet solo is kind of a pain.

for a 4-6 hour event on 40/80 honestly the RG-8X is fine, you're not going to notice the difference in a real-world field setting. LMR-400 is great but you're adding weight and stiffness for marginal gain on those bands. i run RG-8X for everything under 100ft in the field and it's never been the limiting factor.

on the antenna setup thing - if you're going solo i'd look at a NVIS dipole just laid out low rather than fighting with a push-up mast. sounds counterintuitive but for 80m regional traffic nets being 20-25ft up versus 30ft isn't going to kill you and you can get it up fast. i also switched to using a slingshot and fishing line for getting wire into trees and it changed my life honestly, way easier than trying to loft a throw bag by hand.

battery should be plenty. 7300 at 50w draws maybe 10-11 amps transmitting, a lot less on receive. 100ah lifepo4 you're not even going to touch half of it in a 6 hour exercise unless you're keying down constantly.

yeah the generator noise thing is real, we had complaints at our last exercise too from the park people. we ended up going with a battery bank for the radios and only ran the genny for the laptop and misc stuff which helped a lot. if your lifepo4 is in good shape the math works out easy for that length of event.

one thing worth mentioning - we tried a buddipole at an exercise once thinking it'd be faster to set up than a wire dipole and it was honestly kind of a wash in terms of time, and the performance on 80 was noticeably worse. linked dipole in the trees is probably still your best bet if you have the time to set it up. the slingshot suggestion above is solid, i use the wrist rocket style one with about 12lb test mono and a tennis ball weighted bag, clears 50ft trees pretty consistently once you get the feel for it.