so i passed my general back in the spring and joined the local ARES group mostly because my elmer kept bugging me about it and honestly im glad i did. weve been doing nets and tabletop exercises for a few months now and last week the EC announced were getting activated to support the county EOC during a winter storm exercise this weekend.

i know its just a drill but i still feel like i dont really know what im doing. like i understand the basics of passing traffic and checking in to nets but actually sitting at a position in the EOC and being the comms link feels different. my go bag is mostly ready i think, HT with spare batteries, my logging sheet, a copy of the ICS forms we practiced. is there stuff i typically bring that i keep forgetting or things that surprised you your first time doing one of these activations?

also my radio is just a baofeng right now and i keep hearing mixed things about whether thats fine for ARES work or if i should be looking at something better. not trying to start a radio war just genuinely asking because i want to be useful and not a liability

man i remember my first activation, it was a real event not even a drill and i was so nervous i almost forgot to log the time on my first message. the good news is that if youve been doing the nets and you know your phonetic alphabet cold and you can copy a message without panicking, youre probably more ready than you think.

for the go bag stuff i would honestly add a notepad beyond just the ICS forms, sometimes you just need scratch paper and its dumb to not have it. also a pen that actually works in the cold, learned that one the hard way. headlamp is always in mine even for indoor activations because you never know. some kind of snack too because depending on the exercise you might be there longer than expected and nobody wants to be the hungry operator making mistakes.

on the baofeng thing, for a county EOC exercise its totally fine. theyre not glamorous but they work. the EC will let you know if there are specific requirements for your group but most ARES groups just want you to be on frequency with a working radio. once you get more active you might want something with better audio or a mobile rig if you end up doing a lot of deployments but dont stress it for now.

the ICS stuff is what trips up most new folks honestly. knowing the forms is one thing but actually fitting into the incident command structure and understanding who you report to and how information flows, that clicks more once youre actually in the room. just pay attention to who the IC is and follow your EC's lead and you'll be fine for a first drill.

baofeng is fine, dont let anyone tell you otherwise for basic VHF/UHF ARES work. i used one for two years before upgrading.