so ive been a member of our local ARES group for about eight months now and mostly its just been monthly nets and the occasional tabletop exercise which honestly felt pretty low stakes. but our EC just told us theres a real activation coming up — county emergency management asked for radio support during a pretty big flood response situation and they want us deployed at two EOC locations plus a couple shelter sites.

i dont really know what to expect. during drills its all kind of relaxed and if you mess up a message format or whatever people just laugh it off. but the idea of doing this for real with actual emergency managers relying on us is making me second guess whether im actually ready. been studying up on ICS-100 and ICS-200 which our group requires but thats about it.

has anyone been through their first real activation and felt this way? any advice for what to actually expect versus what training prepares you for? like the mechanics of passing traffic i feel okay about but its more the whole environment i guess

yeah that feeling is totally normal and honestly i think it means youre taking it seriously which is a good sign. my first activation was a marathon and i thought itd be easy but the sheer amount of coordination traffic caught me off guard, way more than any net practice had prepared me for. you start second guessing every readback.

what helped me was just reminding myself that the ICS structure exists for a reason — your job is a defined role with a defined scope, you're not expected to know everything thats happening in the whole operation. just handle your piece cleanly and pass accurate traffic. if you're at a shelter site the job is usually pretty straightforward, its the EOC positions that tend to get more hectic. ask your EC which assignment you'll have ahead of time if you dont know already.

one thing nobody told me before my first go: bring snacks and a way to charge your radio that doesnt depend on finding an outlet, even if they say power will be available. learned that one the hard way.

honestly the nervousness doesnt fully go away even after a bunch of activations, at least not for me. but it does get quieter. the main thing i'd say is just write stuff down — like physically on paper. dont rely on memory for message numbers or what time you checked in or who you passed traffic to. log everything even if it seems redundant, because at some point someone will ask and you'll be glad you have it.

also dont be afraid to ask your net control to repeat something if you missed it. way better than guessing and passing bad info. good luck with it, sounds like your group has a real deployment coming and that kind of experience is worth more than a dozen tabletops