so i finally got activated for a real ARES deployment last weekend, not just a drill. there was a pretty bad storm system that came through and the county EOC needed some extra comms support because a couple of the repeaters they rely on were down and they had spotty cell service in parts of the county.

i've been through the IS-100 and IS-700 courses and done maybe 4 or 5 ARES nets and one SET exercise but nothing real. i kind of expected it to be more intense? like on the net they were running pretty disciplined traffic, net control was solid, but a lot of it was just passing routine welfare messages and relaying some logistics stuff for the shelter coordinators. not complaining at all, it was genuinely useful and i felt good about being there, just wasn't the chaos i was expecting from all the training talk.

one thing i did NOT expect was how much just sitting and waiting is part of it. there was probably 2 hours where almost nothing was happening on our frequency and i wasnt sure if i should check in again or just stay quiet and monitor. ended up just staying on and listening which i think was right? my EC mentioned afterward that i did fine so i guess so.

anyone else have that experience with their first real activation? curious what the more experienced folks remember about theirs

yeah that sitting and waiting thing is real and honestly it never fully goes away. i've been doing ARES stuff for going on 12 years now and you still get those long stretches where nothing is moving. the temptation is to start chatting or checking your phone or whatever but keeping that discipline on frequency is actually part of the job even when it feels like nothing is happening.

sounds like your EC had things organized well. a lot of the time a smooth activation looks boring from the inside and thats exactly how its supposed to go. the messy ones where youre constantly busy usually mean something upstream isnt working right. your instinct to just stay quiet and monitor was correct, unless you were told to check in on a schedule just listen and be ready. good first activation honestly, you learned the right lesson early.

that actually sounds really similar to my first one lol. i had built it up in my head based on all the training materials and honestly the ARRL handbook stuff about emergency ops makes it sound very dramatic. real life was a lot more like... organized waiting with occasional radio traffic. which is fine, totally fine, but i definitely had to recalibrate my expectations. the welfare message traffic is underrated too, people dont realize how important that stuff is when phones are jammed up.