so ive been doing a lot of thinking about our county ARES setup for field comms and we keep going back and forth on this generator vs battery bank debate and honestly im getting a little tired of arguing about it at meetings so figured id post here and see what people with actual field experience think

our typical deployment is like 12-24 hours, sometimes stretching to 48 if theres a real event. we're running a couple IC-7300s and some VHF/UHF stuff, maybe a TNC or two for packet. nothing crazy power-wise but it adds up. one guy swears by his Honda eu2200i and another dude brings these massive lithium battery packs and claims he never needs the genny. both seem to work but theres obviously tradeoffs

the antenna side of things i feel like we've mostly figured out - we do a linked dipole for HF that goes up fast, usually just a squid pole or a painters pole lashed to something, and a j-pole for the 2m/70cm work. its not fancy but it gets out. the real headache is always the power situation. noise from generators near the radios, fuel logistics, the weight of big battery banks... none of the options are perfect

what are you guys actually running for extended portable deployments and has anyone done a real comparison of runtime vs weight vs noise for this stuff

yeah the generator noise thing is a real issue and people underestimate it until they're sitting there with S7 hash on 40m and wondering why nobody can hear them. i run a eu2200i for longer events but i keep it at least 50 feet away and use a good quality extension cord, that alone makes a huge difference. also ferrite on the power leads going into the radio, like a bunch of them, dont skimp

for anything under 18 hours or so though honestly a couple of the bioenno 100ah lifepo4 packs are just easier. no fuel, no noise, no exhaust fumes in the tent. the weight is the only real argument against them and if you have a vehicle nearby its basically a non-issue. where it falls apart is if you're genuinely going 36-48 hours with heavy tx duty - thats when the math starts favoring the genny even with all its annoyances

the linked dipole setup sounds solid btw, we do something similar but ive been experimenting with an end fed halfwave on a 9:1 unun and its actually pretty quick to throw up in a field if you have any kind of tree or pole nearby

honestly the honda eu2200i is probably overkill for what you're describing unless you're running amplifiers or something. i did a 24hr field day style thing last summer with just two 50ah lifepo4 in parallel and a 100w solar panel and barely touched 60% discharge. granted it was sunny and we weren't transmitting constantly but still

the solar piece is what people sleep on for extended ops, even a cheap 100-200w panel tied to a decent mppt controller buys you a ton of runtime without the fuel headache. obviously weather dependent which is not great for emergency comms planning but worth factoring in