so i finally got activated for a real event last weekend, our county ARES group got called in to support the local marathon and i was pretty nervous going in. ive only been licensed about 8 months and done maybe 3 or 4 training nets but this was the actual thing with served agencies and everything.

it went fine overall but man there were a few moments where i felt totally lost. like when the EC asked me to move to the shadow frequency i had to ask him to repeat and i could tell a couple of the more experienced guys were a bit impatient. nobody was rude or anything just... i could tell. also the ICS stuff, i understood the basics from the IS-100 course but in practice trying to figure out the actual chain of command on the fly while also monitoring traffic was more than i expected.

anyway curious if anyone else felt like this the first time and whether it gets easier. also wondering how long it typically takes before you feel like you actually know what youre doing at one of these. still really glad i did it though, learned more in those 6 hours than in months of just doing nets.

yeah the first activation is always kind of a baptism by fire no matter how much training you do beforehand. the nets and the tabletops only get you so far. i remember my first one was a flooding event back in like 2011 and i was stationed at the EOC and had absolutely no idea where to plug in my HT antenna or who i was supposed to be reporting to for the first 20 minutes. just kind of stood there looking useful.

it really does get easier, mostly because you start to understand how your specific group operates and you learn the personalities involved. the shadow frequency thing — that varies a lot by group by the way, some ECs use that term differently so dont feel bad for asking. asking is always better than guessing wrong and passing bad traffic. honestly the guys who never ask questions are the ones who cause problems during activations. keep showing up, keep doing the nets, maybe volunteer to be a net control on a training night if your EC lets newer folks do that. that hands-on stuff builds confidence faster than anything.

dont sweat it too much, everyone starts somewhere and the fact that you actually showed up and got activated puts you ahead of probably half the people on the roster who just pay their dues and never come out lol. i went to my first ARES meeting about two years ago and it was six months before i felt comfortable enough to volunteer for anything real. the ICS stuff clicked for me once i took IS-700 in addition to 100, something about the way they explain the span of control in that one made it all make more sense.