so we have a county-level exercise coming up in about 5 weeks and im trying to nail down the power situation before i show up looking like an idiot. last time we had a guy running a honda eu2200 which was fine but it was pretty much dominating the whole audio environment and the NCS kept asking us to key up louder because of the noise floor. not sure if that was RF getting into the audio chain or just the generator running close to the operating position.

my thought was to run a 100ah lifepo4 battery this time for the whole thing, maybe 8-10 hours of operating at maybe 50-60% duty cycle on the IC-7300. i ran the numbers loosely and figured i could stay under 20A average draw if im not hammering the finals constantly. but some guys in the group are saying you always want a generator backup for extended activations and i get that, i just dont want to deal with the noise again.

on the antenna side we're probably doing a linked dipole for 40/80 or possibly just an EFHW with a 9:1 unun up maybe 30 feet on a telescoping mast. the site is pretty open, some trees around the perimeter we could use for support. anyone run this kind of setup for a full-day exercise and have opinions on what actually worked vs what sounded good on paper?

the generator noise thing is almost always conducted - it gets into the DC line and then radiates from whatever's connected to it. ran into the exact same problem at a red cross shelter exercise a few years back. ferrite chokes on the DC feed line helped a lot, like a couple of mix 31 toroids wound with the power cable, and physically separating the genny from the operating position by at least 50 feet made a huge difference too. exhaust direction matters also, people forget that.

on your battery math, 100ah lifepo4 at 50-60% duty cycle with a 7300 you should be fine honestly. that radio draws maybe 22A peak on transmit and closer to 1.5-2A on receive so your average is gonna come in well under 20 depending on how much you're actually transmitting. id still bring a small charger that can top off from whatever AC source is around just in case the exercise runs long. for the antenna the EFHW is probably the easier deploy for a single operator setup, 9:1 unun is fine, just make sure your feedline is choked at the feedpoint or you'll hear it.

yeah the linked dipole is more work to set up but i honestly prefer it for 40/80 because you're not relying on the matcher or the radio's tuner as much. EFHW can be a little finicky depending on the ground situation and i've had them behave weirdly when the wire is too low or running near other stuff. that said if you've got a good 9:1 and some room to get the wire up at a decent angle it's usually fine.

one thing i'd add - if you're doing 8-10 hours bring more battery than you think you need. exercises always run longer than planned and somebody always ends up borrowing your power for their laptop or a radio they didnt charge. just the reality of group exercises lol