so i finally got called up for my first real ARES activation last weekend, county had flooding from all the rain we've been getting and the EOC wanted radio support in case the repeater infrastructure went down or cell got congested. i've been in the group for about 8 months and done maybe 4 or 5 training nets but this was the first time it was an actual thing and not just practice.

honestly i was kind of nervous going in. showed up at the EOC with my go-bag, had my VX-6R and a little slim jim hung out the window of my car, checked into the net on the assigned tactical frequency. the EC had everything pretty well organized, assigned positions, gave us all a quick briefing on what the served agency actually needed from us. ended up mostly doing welfare traffic and some coordination between a couple shelter sites that were having trouble with their phones.

the thing that surprised me most was how much waiting there was. i expected it to be more intense i guess. but also when stuff DID need to happen it happened fast and you had to be ready. glad i'd done the ICS-100 and 200 before this because the terminology at the EOC was exactly that, they really do use it.

anyone else remember their first activation? curious if mine was pretty typical or if i just got a relatively calm one to start with

yeah that sounds pretty typical honestly, most activations are a lot of hurry up and wait especially for flooding or weather events that dont quite hit worst case scenario. the busy ones are when infrastructure actually fails and suddenly you're the only link between two sites and that's when all the training either clicks or it doesnt.

the ICS stuff really does matter, i remember my first activation years ago before i'd done any of the online courses and i felt completely lost when the incident commander started talking about logistics section and ops section and i had no idea where radio fit into any of it. now i help teach the ARES intro training for our group and i always tell new members do the ICS courses before anything else, the antenna stuff you can learn on the fly but not knowing the command structure when you're actually deployed is a real problem.

sounds like your EC ran a tight ship too which helps a lot. not every group has that, ive been to exercises with other counties where it was kind of chaos and nobody was really sure who was in charge of what. glad your first one went well

the waiting is real lol. been in ARES for like 3 years and done probably a dozen activations and drills and the ratio is definitely like 80% sitting around monitoring the frequency to 20% actually doing anything. bring snacks and a good book basically. but yeah when it matters it really does matter so you gotta stay sharp the whole time even when its boring.