so ive been putting together a go-kit style setup for some local emcomm exercises and i keep going back and forth on the power situation. right now i have a little honda eu2200i that i absolutely love for camping but im not sure its the right call for a dedicated field comms setup where i might be running an IC-7300 plus a laptop plus maybe a second radio for VHF.

the math works out fine on paper, the 7300 draws maybe 20-22 amps on transmit at full power but i never run it full power in the field anyway, usually 50-75 watts is plenty. laptop is whatever, 60 watts maybe. the problem is i also want to keep a pair of deep cycle batteries on a tender while everything else is running and i dont know if the eu2200i is going to get grumpy about that.

the antenna situation is actually pretty sorted - ive been running a Buddipole on a painters pole lashed to whatever is available and it works well enough for 40/20/15, sometimes 10 if the band is doing anything interesting. been thinking about a chameleon MPAS lite as an alternative but thats a different thread i guess.

anyone running a similar generator setup for extended field ops, like more than a few hours? curious how much fuel the honda actually burns at like 25% load which is probably where id be sitting most of the time.

the eu2200i at 25% load is remarkably thrifty, i ran one for about 6 hours at a Field Day setup a couple years ago and burned maybe half a tank, maybe a bit less. granted we werent transmitting constantly but it was a solid SSB station on 40 and 20 the whole time. the eco-throttle mode really does make a difference, thing barely sounds like its running.

charging batteries while running other loads should be fine as long as your charger isnt one of those old dumb trickle things that surges weirdly when it kicks on. a proper 3-stage charger like a NOCO or a Victron will play nice with a generator. the inverter output on the honda is clean enough for sensitive electronics so you wont have RFI headaches from it either, at least in my experience. i keep mine about 30 feet away from the operating position and havent had issues even on 40m which i expected to be a problem.

yeah the buddipole on a painters pole setup is pretty much what half the emcomm guys around here use, its not glamorous but it gets the job done. i switched to a end-fed halfwave on a 31 foot jackite pole and honestly for fixed-position field work its just less fiddly, no matching unit to mess with in the rain. the MPAS lite is nice but heavy for what it is imo.

on the generator thing i cant really help much, our group just runs LiFePO4 battery banks for anything under 8 hours and only breaks out the genny for really extended deployments. 100ah lithium gets you through a lot more than you'd think if your running 50 watts and not transmitting 100% of the time.