the scenario was a fictional flooding event that cut off the EOC from the hospital and two shelters. in theory we had enough people to cover all the positions but in practice we didnt really account for operators who arent comfortable with formal net procedures. a couple of the newer folks kind of froze up when it got busy which totally makes sense, nobody wants to mess up in front of everyone, but it showed we need to do more practice runs before the real thing.

the thing that actually worked well was our simplex fallback plan. when we pretended the repeater went down (just had everyone switch to the designated simplex freq) most people made the switch cleanly and we kept traffic moving. that part felt good. also our digital guys had Winlink set up and got a message through to the state EOC which was cool to see actually work under simulated conditions.

anyway just sharing because i think sometimes we only hear about the successes and not the messy reality of how these things actually go. curious if anyone else has done a SET recently and what caught you off guard

The big one for us was net control discipline. We had three different operators rotate through NCS duties during the six hour sim and the handoffs were rough — like really rough. The incoming operator didnt have a complete picture of what traffic had already been passed and we ended up with duplicate messages going to the EOC which caused some confusion on the served agency side. One of the CERT coordinators actually asked us if we had two different nets running because the info she was getting seemed contradictory.

The other thing that bit us was everyone defaulting to the repeater even after we specifically briefed that the scenario included a repeater failure at hour two. Old habits I guess. We lost probably 20 minutes of effective communication time while people figured out why nobody was answering on the usual frequency.

What I thought went well though — our digital guys were awesome. Winlink traffic was flowing smoothly, the two operators running packet did a fantastic job keeping the message log clean. That was a real bright spot.

Anyone else done exercises recently where a specific failure mode surprised you? Curious what other groups are dealing with.

the scenario was a major flooding event, multiple roads cut off, and we had to establish comms between the EOC, two shelter sites, and a staging area for emergency vehicles. sounded simple enough on paper. it was not simple.

biggest thing i noticed right away was that people just assumed someone else had the frequencies and the net control plan sorted. nobody had actually printed out the ICS forms ahead of time. our NCS did a great job staying calm but there was probably a 20 minute period early on where traffic was just a mess, people talking over each other, not identifying properly, sending incomplete messages. one guy kept giving his street address instead of grid coordinates which honestly slowed everything down.

we also found out pretty quick that two of our members had HTs that hadnt been charged since the last meeting. and one of the repeaters we were planning to use had some kind of issue that day so we had to scramble to a backup. which was good in a way because it forced us to actually use the backup, which nobody had really tested.

anyway im curious if anyone else has run drills like this recently and what kinds of surprises came up for your group. feels like the more we practice the more we realize we dont know.

biggest thing for me was how fast the paperwork side of things falls apart when you're tired and stressed. we were only two hours into the exercise and people were already skipping ICS forms or filling them out wrong, and this was just a drill with no real pressure. i keep thinking about what that looks like in an actual deployment where you havent slept and the served agency is asking you questions you dont have answers to yet.

also had one guy show up with a radio that hadn't been programmed with the current repeater frequencies. simple thing but it took like 20 minutes to sort out because nobody had a programming cable on site. we've been talking about doing a gear check before activations but never really formalized it. after this i think we're going to actually put together a pre-deployment checklist that people have to go through at home before they show up.

anyway curious if other groups have done similar exercises and what caught you off guard. especially interested if anyone has done hospital or EOC integration drills because that's our next goal and i have no idea where to start with that honestly.

first thing that went wrong — and i mean within like the first 20 minutes — was that nobody could agree on what frequencies we were supposed to fall back to. we had a plan on paper but half the guys hadnt looked at it since we updated it six months ago. so we basically spent the first half hour just sorting out who was on what and whether everybody had the right PL tones loaded. meanwhile in a real disaster that half hour is everything.

the other big thing was battery life. we kind of assumed everybody showed up with charged gear and yeah, that was a bad assumption. one of our most experienced guys showed up with a radio that had maybe 2 hours of runtime on it. again, in a real event that would have been a serious problem.

anyway we learned a lot and i think the exercise was worth every bit of the chaos. curious if anyone else has done similar drills recently and what kind of stuff caught you off guard. seems like the lessons are always the same but you still have to live through them yourself to really internalize it i guess.]]>4731Wed, 01 Jul 2026 19:08:55 +0000https://www.hamradiobase.com/forums/topic/2445-ran-our-first-ares-tabletop-exercise-last-weekend-some-thoughts/so we finally got around to doing a proper tabletop sim with the local ARES group, been trying to schedule this thing for like four months and kept getting pushed back. anyway the scenario was a prolonged power outage hitting three counties, maybe five to seven days, with cell and landline infrastructure knocked out. we had about eleven people show up which was honestly better turnout than i expected.

what really surprised me — and kind of embarrassed me if im being honest — was how fast things fell apart in the first simulated hour just from people not knowing who was supposed to be doing what. we had two people both trying to be net control at the same time and nobody had a clear picture of which repeaters were actually on backup power and which ones werent. we thought we had all that documented but the documentation was out of date by like two years.

the other big thing that came up was HF fallback. most of the newer members have their tickets but dont really operate HF regularly, so when we got to the part of the exercise where we pretended the repeaters were down, there was this kind of awkward silence. good learning moment though. we're talking about doing a follow up exercise that's strictly HF simplex just to shake out the rust.

curious if anyone else has run exercises like this and what scenarios caught your group off guard. always good to learn from other peoples mistakes before they become your real ones.

well. the drill was a simulated flooding scenario, EOC needed traffic relayed to a couple of shelter locations and we had maybe 6 operators spread out. the actual radio part was fine but what caught me completely off guard was how bad i was at the ICS paperwork side of things. like i knew ICS 100 from the online course but actually filling out an ICS 213 while also trying to copy traffic and not mess up the net was a whole different thing. i kept losing my place in the message and had to ask for fills twice which felt embarrassing even though everyone was super nice about it

also nobody told me the repeater we were supposed to use had a 100hz tone on it and i sat there for like 5 minutes wondering why nobody could hear me. minor thing but in a real event that kind of delay matters

anyway just wanted to share because i think a lot of people assume they're ready until they actually run a drill. anyone else have a story like this or tips for getting better at the message handling part specifically

well first off half the guys showed up without their go kits charged. then when we tried to set up the 2m repeater link it kept dropping out because apparently nobody checked the backup power at the site in months. took us almost 45 minutes just to get a stable connection to the EOC.

but the real disaster was traffic handling - we had like 8 health and welfare messages come in at once and people were stepping all over each other trying to log them. total chaos. our net control guy was getting flustered and started making mistakes on the message forms.

i know its just practice but if this was real people would be screwed. anyone else have drills that went sideways like this? what did you learn from it

i thought i'd be fine, i mean i know how to operate, i've logged probably a couple hundred hours on air by now. but man there's something completely different about trying to pass formal NTS-style traffic when someone is basically timing you and the net control is running 8 stations at once. i fumbled my first message pretty bad, had the wrong precedence on it and forgot to say the station of origin clearly. net control was patient but you could tell they'd seen this before with newer emcomm guys.

the other thing that got me was the ICS stuff. like i understood in theory that you check in with the agency rep before you just start transmitting, but in the chaos of the drill i kind of just... keyed up. got a gentle correction on that too. lesson learned for sure.

anybody else have stories from their first exercises like this? or even from real deployments where stuff didn't go the way you expected? feel like there's a lot of tribal knowledge in this hobby that only comes out when people actually share the failures, not just the wins.

what i didnt expect was how fast things got confusing with net control. we had two guys both trying to act as NCS at the same time on 2m simplex and it basically turned into a mess for the first 20 minutes. nobody had clearly established who had primary net control authority before things kicked off and we just kind of assumed everyone knew. spoiler: they didnt.

the other thing that caught us off guard was how many guys showed up with HTs and nothing else. like no external antenna, no spare batteries, just a stock rubber duck. in a real event those folks would have been pretty limited past maybe a mile or two depending on terrain. we're in a hilly area so line of sight is already tough.

anyway posting this because i know a lot of groups are planning spring exercises and thought maybe hearing what went sideways for us might help somebody else. happy to answer questions about what we did and what we'd change.

the first thing that fell apart was message traffic. we were using ICS-213 forms and someone had printed the wrong version so the fields didnt match what net control was expecting. took like 20 minutes to sort out and in a real event that could matter. second thing was our simplex fallback plan — we'd agreed on a frequency but nobody had programmed it into their handhelds ahead of time so there was a lot of fumbling around.

the good stuff though: our HF link on 40m actually held up really well considering conditions, and one of the newer guys who'd never done anything like this before just kind of stepped up and became a really solid relay station. those moments are why we do this i think.

curious if other groups have done similar exercises and what lessons came out of them. especially interested in how people handle the message traffic piece because that seems to be where we keep falling down.

the big lessons for us — and i know this sounds obvious in hindsight — was that nobody had practiced actual formal message traffic in forever. like people know their callsigns and can ragchew all day but when we started passing ICS-213 style messages through the net it got real slow real fast. one of our guys who's been licensed since the 80s said the same thing happened in his section during a real activation after a tornado, everyone froze up a little on formal procedures because day to day we just dont do it.

we also had a net control handoff that got kind of ugly because the relief operator wasnt sure where we were in the log. something as simple as keeping a shared whiteboard or even just reading the net status out loud before handing off would've fixed that.

anyway wondering if other groups have found specific drills or exercises that help people stay sharp on message handling without making it feel like homework. we want to do monthly stuff but dont want people to stop showing up because its boring.]]>4000Sun, 28 Jun 2026 00:55:14 +0000https://www.hamradiobase.com/forums/topic/3100-ares-drill-last-weekend-really-opened-my-eyes-anyone-else-do-tabletop-exercises/so we ran a simulated disaster comms exercise last saturday with our local ARES group and honestly i wasnt prepared for how much went sideways even in a fake scenario. the whole premise was a major flood had knocked out all repeaters in the county and we had to coordinate shelter locations and resource requests using only simplex HF and VHF direct. sounded simple enough on paper.

what we figured out pretty quick was that nobody had agreed on a common simplex frequency ahead of time and half the guys showed up defaulting to different calling frequencies. one operator was running an IC-7300 with a portable dipole and was hearing everyone fine but nobody could hear him because his antenna situation was just not working out. another guy's go-bag radio had a dead battery because he hadnt checked it in like 8 months. small stuff but it really adds up when you're simulating an actual emergency.

the lesson i personally took away is that our net control training is way weaker than we thought. whoever was running net control that day — and i wont name names — kept acknowledging stations out of order and we ended up with like three people transmitting at the same time for a solid five minutes. just chaos. we do these drills and we think we're prepared and then you find out you're really not.

curious if anyone else has done exercises like this, tabletop or actual field stuff, and what kind of things caught you off guard. feels like every drill teaches you something you couldnt have guessed before you did it.

first thing that humbled me was my go-bag. i thought i had everything dialed in but like 20 minutes in i realized i had forgotten a way to actually mount my HT antenna properly so i was just kind of holding it up with one hand while trying to write with the other. and the logging, oh man, dont even get me started. i was using paper logs and my handwriting under stress is apparently terrible, the net control could barely read what i was sending back.

the experienced guys made it look so easy. one of the elmers in our group was running a mobile rig off a small battery bank and he had this whole system for organizing message forms that i want to steal for myself. anyone else have stories from drills or real deployments where something unexpected taught you a lesson? im trying to build a better system before the next exercise in the fall.

biggest thing i noticed was how fast things fell apart when we simulated the repeater going down. we had a backup frequency plan but honestly like half the guys either hadn't memorized it or couldn't find it in the moment. and im not pointing fingers because i fumbled around with my notes too before i remembered where we were supposed to go. also our net control guy was fantastic but when he had to step away briefly for like 10 minutes nobody had clearly been designated as backup and it got awkward on the air real fast.

anyway i guess im just curious if other groups have found good ways to make sure operators actually internalize the backup plans instead of just having them written down somewhere. laminated cards? pre-programmed channels with agreed upon names? our group is talking about doing a shorter tabletop before the next full exercise to address some of this stuff. anyone done something similar?

What worked exceptionally well:

• Winlink proved absolutely critical for handling health and welfare traffic when internet was down
• NVIS antennas on 80m provided excellent coverage across the mountainous terrain
• Having pre-programmed simplex frequencies was a lifesaver when repeaters went down

What we need to improve: Better coordination between ARES groups from different states, and more training on ICS forms. Emergency ham radio operators usually conduct an After Action session and write a report with the findings and produce summary reports with lessons learned and recommendations.

The digital modes like JS8Call and Vara really showed their value for low-power, reliable communications. If you haven't experimented with these yet, now's the time to start practicing.

biggest thing I learned is that we assumed way too much about who would show up and with what equipment. two of our key operators didn't have their go-bags stocked the way they thought they did, one guy showed up with a dead HT battery and no spares, and we spent like the first 20 minutes just sorting out who had what capability. in a real event that 20 minutes could actually matter.

the net control piece was also rough early on. our primary NC operator did great but when we simulated him becoming unavailable (which, realistically, could happen) the backup had a hard time taking over the log format mid-exercise. we didn't drill that handoff enough clearly.

curious if anyone else has done similar exercises, tabletop or full field deployment sims. what's your group learned the hard way that changed how you prep? we're already talking about a follow-up drill focused specifically on the ICS forms and message handling but I'd love to hear what other groups have found useful.

biggest thing for me personally was how fast my Go Kit battery situation fell apart on paper. i thought i had like 18 hours of runtime figured out but once we actually started simulating continuous net operations with the FT-891 running at 50w for several hours... yeah that math changed pretty quick. also we had a guy show up with a radio he'd never actually used on a net before, like he'd had his ticket for two years and mostly just listened on the repeater. watching him try to handle formal Winlink traffic under simulated pressure was kind of a wake up call for everyone including him, he was a good sport about it though.

the thing that went really well was our liaison with the Red Cross shelter. we had a pre-agreed message format and the volunteer there actually knew what to expect from us which made everything smoother. lesson from previous drills apparently.

curious if anyone else has run exercises recently and what surprised them. especially interested in power management stuff since thats clearly where i need to work

What's the best way for a new operator to get started? Should I jump into a big exercise like SET, or start with smaller local nets? Any recommendations for training courses or resources would be super helpful too. I have a mobile rig and HT, but wondering if I need additional equipment for serious EmComm work.

a few things i noticed right away — my logging was a complete mess. i was trying to use my laptop but the scenario had us assume no internet so i switched to paper mid-exercise and my handwriting was basically illegible under stress. the other thing that got me was how bad i was at prioritizing traffic. like i know the theory, life safety first, welfare traffic second, etc, but when someone hands you a stack of messages and someone else is calling you on the radio at the same time it just falls apart a little.

the experienced operators made it look so easy and watching them helped a lot honestly. one of the elmers in our group kept reminding me to slow down on the mic and just breathe, which sounds obvious but i really needed to hear it. anyway curious if anyone else has been through these kinds of exercises and what surprised you the most the first time around

First thing that fell apart was net control. Our designated NC got stuck in traffic and nobody had really been briefed on who the backup was supposed to be, so there was like 15 minutes of people just kind of calling on the frequency and nobody really taking charge. Eventually Dave W9DTK stepped up and did a great job but that gap was painful to watch. We talked about it in the debrief and decided every drill from now on needs at least two people who are briefed and ready to be NC.

The other thing that surprised me was battery life. I thought my setup was solid — 20Ah LiFePO4 running a 50W mobile — but I had it cranked up for most of the morning passing traffic and by noon I was sweating it. In a real event that shelter location needs power for way longer than a few hours. anybody else run into this kind of thing in their exercises? Curious what solutions people have landed on.

the scenario was a major flooding event that took out most of the repeater infrastructure in the south part of the county. we had to fall back to simplex way faster than anyone expected and i'll be honest, a lot of us were fumbling around trying to remember our pre-planned simplex frequencies. like we had them written down somewhere but nobody had actually practiced using them under simulated stress conditions before.

the other thing that got me was how bad our net control handoffs were. our primary NCS had to "go off the air" at the 45 minute mark per the scenario script and the backup took probably 3-4 minutes to get organized and take over. in a real event that gap could matter. we also had one guy show up with a radio that hadnt been programmed with the updated frequencies from like two months ago so he was basically useless for the first half hour while somebody helped him sort it out.

anyway im curious if anyone else has done these kinds of exercises and what surprised you the most when things didnt go the way you thought they would. i feel like i learn more from these drills than from any training session.

honestly thought it would go smoother than it did. first thing that fell apart was everyone trying to talk at the same time on the simplex frequency — we had maybe 8 operators and nobody wanted to wait their turn, net control kept getting stepped on. the guy running net control was one of our more experienced guys too, so it wasnt a skill issue, just... chaos, which i guess is kind of the point of doing these exercises right.

the other thing that surprised me was how fast the ICS message forms slowed everything down. in a real keyboard-and-chair environment they make sense but out in the field with people handing you scribbled notes, translating that into proper ICS 213 format while also trying to relay on the radio took way longer than i expected. we ended up with a backlog of like 4-5 messages at one point.

anyway curious if anyone else has run similar exercises and what caught you off guard. feels like there's always something that humbles you when you do one of these for real.

the biggest thing that bit us was logging. we had like four people trying to handle message traffic and nobody had agreed ahead of time on whether we were using ICS-213 forms or just free text logs. total chaos for the first 20 minutes. the net control guy (who is very experienced, been doing this for 30+ years) said this was actually the most realistic part because real disasters always start that way.

we also had a scenario inject where the repeater went down and we had to shift to simplex. that was where things really fell apart because half the team didnt know the backup simplex frequency we'd filed in the EOP. lesson learned there for sure.

anyway curious if anyone else does these drills regularly and what the biggest surprises were for your group. do you do tabletop stuff or full-on simulated exercises with actual radio traffic?]]>3297Mon, 22 Jun 2026 17:00:39 +0000https://www.hamradiobase.com/forums/topic/747-that-big-storm-last-month-got-me-thinking-about-emergency-prep/so we had that crazy windstorm that knocked out power for like 3 days and cell towers were down too. i had my ht and mobile rig but honestly felt pretty useless since i didnt really know who to talk to or what frequencies to monitor. our local club talks about emergency communication but we never really practice it you know? just wondering what others have done to actually prepare for this stuff beyond just having the radios