so i finally joined my county ARES group a few months back after getting my general and ive been going to the weekly nets and the occasional training session but next weekend they're actually activating us for a local marathon event and i honestly dont know what to expect. like i know the basics, i can operate a radio obviously, but im not sure how formal everything is on an actual activation vs just training nets. do i just show up with my HT and wait to be told what to do? should i bring my mobile rig too just in case? our EC sent out an email but it was kind of vague about specifics.

ive done a couple ICS-100 and ICS-200 courses online which the group requires but this is my first real world thing. any advice from people who've done these before would be great. im a little nervous tbh

marathons are honestly one of the easier activations to start with, good timing on your part. usually they'll have you stationed at a water stop or mile marker and your job is basically just to relay runner status and any medical issues back to net control. most of the time nothing happens and you just check in every 15-20 minutes to say all is well at your position. bring a chair and water because you might be standing around for 3-4 hours.

your HT should be fine for something like that but yeah bring the mobile if you have it, some of those course positions can be in low spots and an HT might struggle depending on the repeater. definitely introduce yourself to the EC when you arrive and let them know its your first activation, they'll usually pair newer folks with someone experienced or at least give you a buddy to call if things get confusing. the ICS stuff matters more on bigger deployments honestly, for a marathon its pretty relaxed. you'll do great, just listen to net control and dont key up unless you have traffic or they call you.

yeah what he said, marathons are chill. i was nervous my first one too and it turned out to be just a lot of standing around eating granola bars lol. one thing i'll add is make sure your radio is programmed with the correct repeater AND the simplex fallback frequency before you show up, had a guy at our last event show up and his HT only had the default channels loaded which was kind of awkward. also bring a notepad and pen, sounds obvious but i forget mine every time almost