so i finally got activated for a real ARES deployment last weekend, not just a drill. county EOC needed comms support during the flooding event we had come through friday night into saturday morning. ive been a member of our local ARES group for about 8 months but this was my first actual activation and i gotta say it was a completely different experience from any of the nets or tabletop exercises we've done.

my EC had me stationed at one of the shelter sites with a go-kit running on a 2m simplex frequency coordinated through the EOC net. pretty basic stuff but man when you're actually doing it for real people and the served agency staff are counting on you for message traffic it hits different. i was passing health and welfare messages for maybe 4 hours straight and keeping the net log. nothing went wrong exactly but i felt underprepared in a few ways — like i kept second guessing my ICS message format on the ICS-213 forms and had to ask the net control to repeat a couple times.

anyway just wanted to share because i dont think i really understood what ARES training was building toward until i was actually sitting there doing it. curious if anyone else remembers their first real activation and if you had that same kinda nervous energy the whole time

yeah that nervous energy is real, i remember my first one vividly and i've been doing this for almost 12 years now. it was a search and rescue support operation and i completely blanked on the phonetic alphabet mid-transmission which i had literally done hundreds of times in practice. brain just went sideways on me. you'll get more comfortable with each activation but honestly a little bit of that tension is good — keeps you focused and professional.

the ICS-213 thing is super common for newer operators, dont beat yourself up. the format looks simple on paper but when you're tired and the served agency is asking you questions while you're trying to write and receive at the same time it gets complicated fast. our group started doing more realistic message handling drills specifically because of feedback like yours. if your EC does any AAR sessions after activations definitely bring that up, that kind of honest feedback is exactly what makes the training better for everyone coming behind you.

thats really cool you got activated so soon after joining, some groups it takes forever before anything actually happens. we had one guy in our ARES group who trained for like 3 years and never got called out for a real event. makes it harder to stay motivated honestly.

i'm still just doing the weekly nets and waiting for my EC to sign off on my ICS-100 and 200 so i can even be on the callout list. did your group require any specific certifications before they'd deploy you or was it more informal