Glad to hear that you got a better antenna and are looking at auxiliary power.
Battery recommendations for EmCom are contained in Unit 5, Family and Personal Preparedness, of the Virginia ARES / RACES Basic Operator Course, located at
http://www.va-ares.org/Training/training.htmlMy experience has been that the commercially assembled battery packs targeted to amateurs contain small batteries of very limited capacity, dressed up in fancy packaging with unneeded "bells and whistles" which make them more complicated, reduce their reliability and increase their cost.
The popular "Power Station" contains only a 7ah battery. It will may run your HT or a laptop and TNC for a while, but will go flat in short order if you try to use it to power an FM mobile or HF rig! Larger models touted to jump start cars are still only about 17ah. They'd power an HT, laptop and TNC for a portable packet station, but are inadequate to operate a mobile rig except at low power, or an HF rig at anything above "QRP."
The Quantum battery packs produced for photographic use are very high quality, specialized units, but also expensive and of limited capacity. They contain a 2.4 amp-hour battery which is OK for running an HT, but not larger equipment. You can drain one of these before finishing on an all-day public service event.
A good rule of thumb for sizing auxiliary batteries is to ensure one amp-hour of battery capacity for each watt of transmitter output, as a minimum! For RACES disaster response kits double that figure.
To power an HT all day for public service events or accompanying ground SAR or damage assessment teams you are better off assembling and testing your own pack. Contact your local hospital and ask their building engineer and mnaterial management about getting their old gel cell batteries they change out. Most larger hospitals rotate these on four-year cycles and while they have some "age" on them, most will be good, but at somewhat reduced capacity, and they are free. We collect TONS of batteries from Virginia hospitals for distribution statewide. Municipal recycling programs work with battery retailers to help us recycle and properly dispose batteries we collect which fail load testing. Most of the batteries we collect are 4 years old and give us another year or two of operation before we finally recycle them. The cost is "right."
For HTs connect in parallel two or three 2ah lead-acids. These are flat, fit in a jacket pocket and stack easily. Look in the biomedical engineering department, as they are widely used in portable diagostic instruments. The larger 7ah gel cells used in the "Power Station" are common in household alarm systems and can be bought new at retail for around $20. They will power an HT all day and fit in a military surplus ammunition magazine pouch.
My favorite battery for portable operating is a flat 17ah of the type commonly rigged in series pairs for fire alarms and emergency lighting. These weigh about 11 pounds, but carry easily in a backpack or small briefcase. They are great for QRP operating or for portable packet. You can use one to power a mobile radio at low or medium power for portable operation for public service events, but they won't last long if you transmit with more than 20w.
The recommended transportable battery for EmCom, if you only have to carry the battery a short distance from your car to the operating position - not long distance foot travel, is the Battery Council International Group U1 size. These run from 30-34ah depending upon construction, and weigh about 25 pounds. These will power a typical mobile rig at 25 watts all day for public service events. You can run HF at 25w SSB with fairly good results for on "short path" and will lose only an S-unit or so of signal compared to 100 watts.
For serious portable HF during Field Day or for stationary backup at Red Cross chapter houses, etc. You want BCI Group 27 or larger deep cycle batteries in the 100ah range. These are not "portable" at 65 pounds each, but are readily transportable by one person for short distances. A pair of these mnake good home station backup. Four in parallel are recommended for fixed repeater backup, EOCs etc.
The easiest way to charge any of these gel cell batteries is to go to
www.batterychargers.com and look at the Schumacher 1.5 amp automatic battery maintainer. This charges small gel cells and will also charge and maintain car batteries and deep cycle batteries up to BCI Group 27, though you may have to be patient. For overnight charging of gel cells larger than 80ah, get the 6A Schumacher SE-600 or float the battery in parallel across your 13.8V regulated power supply. Just be sure to put a couple Shotky diodes in line so that the battery doesn't backfeed into your power supply and "smoke" it if the AC power goes off and your backup system "fails to battery."
73 de KE4SKY
Virginia RACES Training Officer