so i finally got to participate in a proper ARES simulated emergency test last saturday and honestly it was kind of an eye opener. ive been licensed for about three years now and done some basic net check-ins but never anything like an actual SET before. our EC had us set up a kind of scenario where the county EOC had lost landlines and internet and we had to pass formal traffic between three different served agencies using only HF and VHF.

the part that humbled me the most was ICS forms. i thought i knew what an ICS-213 was but actually filling one out under pressure while someone is reading you traffic on 40 meters and you're trying to log it and acknowledge and not step on anyone... that's a different thing entirely. i made a mess of the first two messages and had to ask for fills which felt embarrassing but honestly probably good practice.

the other thing i didnt expect was how much the simplex fallback mattered. we lost the repeater early in the exercise on purpose and suddenly half the team couldnt hear each other and we had to scramble. my HT with rubber duck was basically useless at that point. note to self: bring the slim jim next time.

anyway curious if others have done these exercises and what kind of things caught you off guard the first time around. also wondering if anyone has good resources for practicing message handling at home before the real thing.

yeah the ICS forms thing gets everybody the first time. i remember my first SET maybe 15 years ago now, i was so focused on the radio part that i completely forgot to put a precedence on the message and the net control just went silent for a second and then very politely asked me to reread it haha. good learning moment.

the simplex thing is SO important and i feel like a lot of newer folks dont drill on it enough. we actually added a dedicated simplex-only segment to our county exercises after a real activation a few years back where the main repeater site lost power and we basically had a communications gap for about 40 minutes until someone figured out what freq everyone should move to. that was a real lesson learned situation right there.

for practicing message handling at home, look into the National Traffic System nets. there are slow-net style ones on HF that are pretty welcoming to newer folks and you can get real reps passing formal traffic without the pressure of an exercise. ARRL has the radiogram format too if you want to drill that specifically. honestly just get on a local traffic net a few times a week and after a month or two it becomes muscle memory.

the slim jim comment is real, i keep one rolled up in my go bag now after a similar situation. rubber ducks are kind of a joke for anything serious.

one thing that caught me off guard in my first exercise was just... how slow everything felt? like in my head emergency comms was going to be fast paced and intense but actually passing written traffic correctly takes time and you cant rush it or you introduce errors. i think i came in with a TV drama idea of what it would be like lol. the discipline of slowing down and being precise, that was the adjustment for me.