so i finally got my general last spring and joined the local ARES group a few months back, been going to the monthly nets and the training sessions but this weekend is apparently going to be my first actual activation — county OEM called us in to support a pretty big search and rescue operation in the hills east of town and im just... not really sure what i should be bringing or what my role is going to be.

my EC has been great about answering questions but i dont want to keep bugging him right before an activation when hes probably got a hundred things going on. i have my HT and a spare battery pack, a mag mount mobile setup in my car, and ive been practicing my ICS forms on the ARRL training site. is there anything that always catches new people off guard on their first real one? like stuff you wish someone had told you before you showed up

oh man i remember my first activation, it was a flood support thing maybe 8 years ago now. honestly the biggest thing nobody told me was just how much waiting there is. you show up all pumped up and ready to radio and then you sit in a parking lot for two hours waiting for assignment. bring food, bring water, bring something to sit on if you dont have a camp chair already in the car.

the other thing — and this sounds obvious but i completely blanked on it — write down your frequencies, your EC's call, the EOC contact info, all of it on paper. dont rely on your phone. i had mine die on me halfway through and suddenly i felt completely cut off even though i had a perfectly working radio sitting right there. also just listen way more than you talk at first, you'll figure out the flow of how your group operates faster that way than any training will teach you. you're gonna do fine, the fact that you're asking these questions means youre already better prepared than some folks who show up.

ICS 100 and 200 done? those are the ones that matter most for your first time, sounds like you've been doing the homework which is good. one thing i'd add is just make sure your radio is programmed with all the local repeaters AND simplex frequencies before you get there — had a new member show up once who only had like 3 channels in his HT and we needed to move to a different repeater halfway through. not a disaster but it slowed things down.