so i finally got activated for a real event last weekend, been doing the training nets and drills for about 8 months now and was starting to wonder if any of it would ever actually matter. our EC called us up for a county-wide severe weather watch that turned into a pretty serious situation saturday night, multiple tornado warnings in adjacent counties and our served agency (county OEM) needed people at the EOC and a couple of the shelter sites.

i was assigned to one of the shelter locations running a simplex link back to the EOC since the repeater coverage there is spotty at best. honestly i was nervous as hell going in but once i sat down and started passing traffic it just kind of clicked. all those ICS drills and the message handling practice on the weekly nets really did prepare me better than i realized. we ended up running about 4 hours before the watch expired and they stood us down.

anyway if anyone is on the fence about getting more involved with their local ARES group, i guess im just saying the training actually does translate when the real thing happens. took me a while to believe that

that's really good to hear man. i've been sitting in on the training nets for our group for maybe 3 months and sometimes it feels like we're just going through the motions, like will this ever actually be used. good to know the repetition pays off. what radio were you running at the shelter, were you on HT or did you bring a mobile rig?

yeah that first real activation is something else. i remember mine was a flood event probably 12 years ago now and i made every rookie mistake in the book, missed a message, forgot to log a time, the whole thing. but you learn way more in 4 hours of a real event than in months of drills honestly. sounds like your EC runs a tight training program. a lot of groups let the nets get pretty sloppy and then wonder why people struggle under pressure. glad it went well, these served agency relationships take a long time to build and every good activation helps cement the trust with the OEM folks.