so ive been putting together a go-kit for ARES activations and just general portable ops and im kind of going back and forth on the power situation. right now i have a 100ah lifepo4 battery that i picked up last year and it runs my IC-7300 just fine at home but im not sure how long it'll actually last in the field running like 50-100w for several hours. i did the math and i think it should be okay but i always feel like i underestimate something.

the alternative is bringing my honda eu2200i which i know is rock solid and i can run it all day but then im hauling a generator plus fuel plus the battery anyway because i use the battery as a buffer so it doesnt seem like i actually save weight. and the noise is a factor too depending on where we're set up, some of the sites we use for emcomm activations are kind of near neighborhoods.

on the antenna side im pretty happy with my buddipole setup but i keep hearing people talk about the end fed half wave for portable work. anybody running one of those off a 9:1 unun or whatever? im wondering if its actually simpler to deploy than the buddipole because that thing takes me like 20 minutes to get dialed in on a new band.

anyway the main question is really about the generator vs battery thing. what are people actually doing in the field for a full day activation

the lifepo4 should be fine honestly. 100ah at 12.8v nominal is about 1280wh and even running the 7300 at 100w output youre probably drawing somewhere around 20-22 amps so call it maybe 250-270 watts at the wall. that gives you maybe 4 hours at full tilt before youre down to like 20% which is where you want to stop pulling on lifepo4. but if you're doing actual field comms you probably arent transmitting continuously, more like 20-30% duty cycle, so realistically that battery could carry you through a pretty long day.

i dropped the generator for most of my activations last year and havent missed it. the eu2200i is great but youre right about the noise and honestly the setup and teardown time adds up. only time i'd bring it now is if we knew it was going to be a multi-day thing or if we had multiple stations running.

on the efhw question yes absolutely simpler to deploy than the buddipole for most bands. throw a line over a branch and your up in like 5 minutes. the 9:1 unun works fine, some people prefer the 49:1 for a true end fed half wave configuration but i honestly cant tell a huge difference in my results on 40 and 20.

yeah the buddipole can be kind of tedious to retune, i went through a phase with one and eventually just went back to a simple wire. efhw with a 49:1 is hard to beat for quick deployment, i can have mine up in under 10 minutes if i have a decent tree nearby and the swr is usually good enough to not even need the tuner on most bands. you do need a little counterpoise or at least make sure your coax length isnt fighting you.

one thing about the generator vs battery debate nobody mentions — if you're doing emcomm specifically, some EOC coordinators actually prefer you have a generator because they want to see sustained capability over many hours without relying on you to have charged your batteries beforehand. i get the weight argument but depending on your role in the activation it might matter. just something to think about, not saying bring it every time.