so we finally got around to doing a proper SET with our local ARES group and honestly it was pretty eye opening. we had about 14 operators show up which is way more than i expected, but then things kind of fell apart in ways i didnt anticipate.

the biggest issue was that nobody agreed on which net frequency to use when we lost contact with the EOC. we had a backup written down somewhere but half the operators had old copies of the plan and the other half had the updated one and yeah that was a mess. spent probably 20 minutes just sorting that out which in a real disaster would be really bad.

the other thing that got me was how fast battery reserves got eaten up. a couple guys had their HTs running full power the whole time and by hour three they were basically useless. we talked after about power discipline but i feel like that needs to be drilled into people more during the exercise itself, not just in the debrief.

anyone else done these and have thoughts on how to make the scenarios more realistic without it becoming this giant logistical headache? we want to do another one in the fall and id love to hear what other groups have built into their exercises that actually made people learn something.

yeah the frequency confusion thing is super common and honestly it trips up groups that have been doing this for years too. what helped our section was laminating a single reference card — like credit card sized — that every operator keeps in their go bag. has the primary, secondary, and tertiary freqs, the net control callsign format, and the ICS position they're assigned to. took like one meeting to put together and it cut down on that kind of confusion a lot.

the battery thing is just ongoing pain honestly. we started doing what we call a radio check plus power check where net control asks people to report their battery status every hour. sounds tedious but it means you know before someone goes dark. also pushed people toward getting at least one 10Ah USB battery bank that can charge their HT on the go, most of them are cheap enough now there's no real excuse.

for making scenarios more realistic, best thing we ever did was introduce injects — like little curveballs the exercise controller throws in. suddenly a shelter needs to report they have a medical situation, or the repeater goes down and you have to go simplex. people really learn when something unexpected happens and they can't fall back on muscle memory.

this is actually really helpful to read, im a newer ham and just joined my county ARES group a few months ago and didnt really know what to expect from a SET. the inject idea sounds kind of intense but i get why it would work better than just pretending everything goes smoothly.

quick question — when you say you lost contact with the EOC, was that simulated or did something actually fail? asking because i wasnt sure if in these exercises you're supposed to let real problems happen or if everything is kind of scripted.