so we finally got around to doing a full-scale simulated disaster exercise Saturday and honestly it was kind of humbling. we've been talking about doing one for like two years and actually running through it showed us how many assumptions we'd been making about how things would go.

the scenario was a major bridge collapse cutting off the east side of the county, EOC needs radio links to three shelter locations and the hospital. on paper it looked totally manageable. in practice we had net control trying to juggle too many stations at once, a couple guys showed up with radios that hadnt been programmed with the current frequencies (one of them was still on the frequencies from our plan that we revised last spring), and we spent probably 20 minutes just sorting out who was supposed to be where before any actual traffic got passed.

the thing that surprised me most was how fast everyone's procedure kind of fell apart once there was any time pressure. people were doubling up on transmissions, not waiting for the net to clear, couple instances of folks using their callsigns wrong in traffic nets. all stuff we know how to do, just... didn't under simulated stress i guess.

what's worked for your groups when you do these? we're trying to figure out if we should be doing smaller more frequent drills instead of the big annual thing. or maybe tabletop exercises first before we get on the air. curious what others have found.

yeah this sounds really familiar honestly. we went through something similar a few years back and the biggest lesson for us was that the paperwork side — message forms, logging, all of that — completely falls apart when people are stressed and improvising. we actually started doing monthly 30-minute nets that are just focused on one specific skill, like one month is just formal traffic passing, next month is just simplex fallback procedures, that kind of thing. nothing fancy but it keeps the muscle memory there.

the frequency programming thing is such a common problem and it basically comes down to having one person own that job and everyone knowing who that person is. we have a standing rule that if you havent checked in with the comms officer in the 60 days before a drill your radio gets checked before you're assigned anywhere. sounds rigid but it stopped that problem cold for us.

the tabletop idea is good too, we do those in the winter when nobody wants to stand outside and they're actually pretty useful for the newer folks who havent been through a real activation. gets them thinking about the scenarios without the pressure of being on the air in front of everyone.

this is something i want to get more involved in, ive only been licensed about 8 months and our local ARES group seems pretty active but i wasnt sure if drills like this were for newer hams or more experienced folks. is that something where a newcomer would just be in the way or is there usually a role for people who are still learning the ropes?