so this past weekend was my first actual activation with our county ARES group, we were supporting a pretty big bike event that had some communications gaps out on the rural route sections where the event organizers couldnt get cell coverage. nothing crazy, just passing traffic and doing welfare checks on riders but it was way more useful than i expected honestly

i've been part of the group for about a year and done a few tabletop exercises and one SET but this was the first time we actually deployed and it felt really different from the training. like the training made sense in the room but out there at a rest stop for 6 hours with the sun beating down it becomes a much more practical thing real fast

my question is mostly around net control stuff — the guy running NC was incredible, super calm and efficient, and i was watching how he handled conflicting traffic and stations stepping on each other. is there a specific resource for learning that side of things or is it mostly just experience? also our EC mentioned something about ICS integration and how we're supposed to fit into the incident command structure, i got a little lost there. do most ARES groups require the ICS courses before you can activate?

congrats on your first activation, those community event support ops are actually really great for getting your feet wet before anything high stress comes along. the ICS stuff is something a lot of groups handle differently but yeah most ARES groups around here at least expect you to have IS-100 and IS-700 done before you'd be assigned to anything during an actual declared emergency. they're free online through FEMA's training site and honestly dont take that long. IS-200 is worth doing too if you want to understand the command structure better and how we plug in as a support function rather than running our own show

as for net control, your best bet is honestly just asking your EC if you can shadow the NC operator on the next few events and then maybe try a low stakes net yourself. a lot of people learned by doing weekly check-in nets first where the consequences of fumbling something are basically zero. there's also the ARRL's emergency communication course series, EC-001 through EC-003 i think, and the later ones get into net operations more specifically. but really nothing beats watching someone who's good at it and then doing it yourself with someone who can correct you in the moment

yeah the ICS courses are pretty much standard at this point, at least in my experience. our group actually requires 100, 200, 700, and 800 before anyone gets put on the deployment roster. seems like a lot at first but they go fast and it genuinely does help you understand why things work the way they do at an EOC or event command post instead of just kind of standing there confused when the IC is talking about sections and branches

also 6 hours at a rest stop in the sun sounds exactly like my first activation haha, bring more water than you think you need every single time