so we finally got around to doing a proper simulated emergency exercise with our local ARES group and i have some mixed feelings about how it went. for context we had about 14 operators spread across 4 sites — EOC, two shelters, and a mobile unit in a van — and the scenario was basically a major storm had knocked out infrastructure and we were supposed to be the only reliable comms link between sites.

the good stuff first: net control did a really solid job staying calm and keeping traffic moving, and we actually had pretty decent coverage with our 2m/70cm setup once we figured out where to point the yagi from the van. but here's where things got rough — we had two operators who had never done formal message handling and the whole ICS-213 thing was just completely foreign to them, like they knew how to key up and talk but when it came to actually passing formatted traffic they kind of froze up. nobody's fault, we just hadnt drilled that part enough beforehand.

also discovered our backup power situation at one of the shelters was way worse than anyone thought. the battery we had there hadnt been tested in like 2 years and it gave out after maybe 45 minutes. during a real event that would've been a serious problem. honestly that part was kind of embarrassing but better to find out now i guess.

curious if other groups have done similar exercises and what lessons came out of them, specifically around getting newer operators comfortable with message traffic before an actual event happens

yeah the battery thing is such a classic drill discovery lol. we had almost the exact same situation at our SET last fall — someone had a "fully charged" gel cell that turned out to be basically dead. now our EC has everyone bring their backup power to a monthly meeting once a year just to load test everything before it matters. takes like an hour and has already caught two more bad batteries since we started doing it.

on the message handling issue, what worked for us was doing short practice sessions at the end of our regular nets. like not a full drill, just five minutes where someone has to pass a formatted ICS-213 verbally and the net control writes it down. repetition is everything with that stuff. new hams especially tend to think it's more complicated than it is but they just havent done it enough times to feel natural. once it clicks it really does click though

the freezing up on message format is so real, i did that my first drill and felt terrible about it even though everyone was nice. what helped me was just printing out a few sample ICS-213 forms and keeping one in my go bag so i could kind of follow along if i blanked. its not cheating its just being prepared i think. also honestly watching some of the ARRL training videos on winlink and formal traffic helped me understand why the format matters not just what the format is, that made it stick better for me