so i finally got activated for the first time last weekend, been a member of our local ARES group for about 8 months and mostly just done the monthly nets and one tabletop exercise back in the spring. but there was a pretty bad storm system that came through thursday night and our county emergency manager actually called us up friday morning to support the EOC.

i ended up staffing a shelter for about 6 hours with another ham i'd never actually met in person before, just seen on the nets. we were doing welfare traffic and keeping a link back to the EOC on simplex while the repeater was acting flaky from a power issue. nothing super glamorous but it felt real, you know? like all the training stuff suddenly made sense.

anyway i guess my question for people who've done this more than i have — how do you handle it when served agency staff dont really know what to do with you? the shelter coordinator was nice but kept asking me to help with things that weren't really radio related and i wasn't sure how far to step in or stay in my lane. didn't want to be useless but also didn't want to overstep

that's a great question and honestly it comes up more than people talk about. the short answer from my experience is you kinda read the room. if the coordinator is overwhelmed and needs an extra set of hands moving cots or whatever, helping out for a few minutes isn't going to hurt anything as long as your radio is still being monitored and you're not abandoning your comm assignment. served agencies appreciate when we're flexible, it builds the relationship.

but the flip side is you're right to be careful. your primary job is communications and if you get pulled too deep into logistics or whatever and miss a message or aren't available when they actually need the radio link, that's a problem. i usually just tell people something like "i can help with that real quick but i need to stay close to the radio" and most coordinators get it immediately once you explain it that way. sounds like you handled it fine though, six hours on a real activation in your first year is solid experience most people dont get for a while

yeah the served agency relationship thing takes time to figure out. we had a new member a couple years back who basically became a second logistics volunteer at a shelter activation and his radio went unmonitored for like 45 minutes while he was helping sort donations. EC wasn't thrilled lol. not throwing anyone under the bus it's just one of those things you learn. sounds like your instincts were good though asking the question is the right first step