so our ARES group has a county-wide exercise coming up in about 5 weeks and im trying to nail down the power situation before we commit to anything. we've got two sites to staff, one at the EOC which has shore power obviously, but the other is a hilltop site with nothing - no outlets, no building, just a clearing with good elevation and line of sight to three repeaters.

my usual go-to is just a big AGM battery and a solar panel but the forecast for that weekend is looking pretty gloomy and i dont want to be sitting there watching my voltage drop at hour six of a twelve hour op. so i started thinking about bringing the honda eu2200i that lives in my truck anyway but then theres the noise issue, these things arent silent even with the eco throttle, and we're supposed to be doing realistic PACE planning so maybe running a genny the whole time defeats the point a little.

also on the antenna side - right now im leaning toward putting up a linked dipole for 40/80 and a jpole for 2m/70cm on a push-up mast. the site is about 1800 feet elevation so i dont think i need a ton of gain, coverage area is pretty flat farmland below us. anyone run something similar for a multi-band field setup? curious what people are actually doing versus what looks good in the planning docs

the hybrid approach is honestly the way to go for exactly what you're describing. run the honda just long enough to top off your batteries during the slow periods then shut it down. eu2200i in eco mode pulling like 0.1 gallons an hour, you can cycle it a few times over 12 hours and barely dent a 2 gallon can. we did something similar at a public service event last fall, had a 100ah lithium running the IC-7300 and accessories, genny only came on twice for maybe 40 minutes total.

on the antenna - linked dipole is solid, no complaints there for HF. if you have the mast height for it id almost suggest an EFHW over the linked dipole just for ease of deployment, one feedpoint, no links to mess with in the dark or in a hurry. for the VHF side a jpole on a push-up at 1800ft is gonna work great, you wont need the gain and the lower angle of radiation off a simple vertical is usually better for covering that kind of terrain anyway.

yeah the generator noise thing is real, we got complaints at a skywarn activation a couple years ago and it was embarassing. that said 12 hours is a long time to be running purely on battery if the solar isnt cooperating. whats your load looking like - just HF and a handheld or are you running a laptop, signalink, the whole shebang? makes a big difference in how fast youre gonna drain a 100 or even a 200ah bank.

the linked dipole should be fine for what youre doing. i'd double check your feedline length before you go though, had a buddy show up to a field site once with not quite enough coax to reach the radio from where the antenna actually needed to go, cost him like 45 minutes fiddling around. sounds dumb but it happens more than people admit