so we finally got around to doing a proper tabletop sim with our local ARES group, been trying to organize this for like 8 months and it kept getting pushed back for various reasons. we had about 11 people show up which honestly was better than i expected.

the scenario we ran was a prolonged power outage after a major ice storm, county EOC is up but commercial comms are degraded, and we're tasked with handling health and welfare traffic plus liaising with the Red Cross shelter on the other side of town. pretty realistic for our area honestly.

what surprised me was how fast things fell apart when we introduced the wrinkle that two of our designated net control operators were "unavailable" (we just told people mid-exercise that they were out of the picture). nobody had really thought through succession. like we have a net control, and a backup net control, but what happens when BOTH are gone? there was a solid 10 minutes of people kind of looking at each other waiting for someone to step up.

the other thing that caught us off guard was message handling. we all know how to fill out an ICS 213 or pass an ARRL radiogram but when you're actually doing it under simulated stress and someone's throwing 4 messages at you at once, it gets messy fast. a couple of our newer folks had clearly never actually PASSED formal traffic before, just studied it.

anyway i think the exercise was worth every bit of the chaos it caused. already thinking about what to run next time. has anyone else done tabletops specifically focused on the EOC interface side of things? that felt like our weakest link honestly.

yeah the succession thing catches basically every group off guard the first time they actually test it. we had the same moment of silence during a simulated exercise a few years back and it was genuinely humbling. now we actually rotate who runs net control during our regular Tuesday nets just so more people have reps doing it under normal conditions, the idea being if its not scary during a normal night it wont be paralyzing during an actual event.

the traffic handling piece is huge and i dont think we emphasize it enough in training. theres a real difference between knowing the format and being able to move traffic smoothly when youre juggling a log, a radio, and somebody asking you questions at the same time. we started doing monthly traffic practice sessions separate from the ARES stuff and it helped a lot. some of the folks who struggled most actually turned into really solid operators once they had more reps.

for EOC interface specifically — if you havent already its worth getting a couple people through the ICS courses if they havent done them. not because youll follow ICS to the letter necessarily but because it helps everyone speak the same language as the served agency folks. that was a real friction point for us early on.

this is making me want to actually push my club to do something like this, we keep talking about it but its usually just a once a year SET and honestly those feel pretty scripted to me. like everyone kind of knows whats coming and it doesnt really stress test anything.

question — how did you handle people who couldnt make it in person, did you do any of it over the air or was it all around a table? we have a few members who are pretty far out and getting everyone in one room is tough.