so we ran a simulated disaster exercise last Saturday, scenario was a major flooding event that knocked out all repeaters in the southern part of the county and we had to coordinate shelter-to-EOC traffic using only simplex and a couple HF links. about 14 operators showed up which honestly was more than i expected.

the part that surprised everybody — including the EC — was how fast things broke down once we actually had message traffic flowing. like in theory we all knew ICS forms and the net protocol but when three people are trying to check in at the same time on simplex with marginal signals and someone at the shelter needs to relay health-and-welfare info, it got real messy real fast. nobody was really at fault it just exposed that we hadnt practiced actual traffic handling under any kind of simulated stress, just the checkin/checkout stuff.

the other thing that came up was battery power. two of our guys thought they had fresh batteries in their HTs and they didnt. one guys radio died maybe 90 minutes in. we wrote that up in the AAR as a big item — you have to actually TEST your backup power before any exercise, not just assume.

anyway curious if others have run drills that surfaced stuff like this, especially around message handling or just the chaos of real-time coordination. we're trying to build a better training pipeline and id love to hear what worked for other groups.

yeah the battery thing bites everyone at least once. we had the exact same wake-up call a couple years ago during a SET. guy showed up with an HT that he swore was charged and it was at like 40% from sitting in his go-bag for three months. after that our group made a standing rule — 24 hours before any exercise or activation you physically charge everything and write the date on a piece of tape on the battery. sounds dumb but it works.

the message traffic chaos you're describing is super common when groups practice checkins all the time but never actually move any traffic. like the net control skills and the formal message skills are almost separate muscle memories and both atrophy if you dont use them. we started doing monthly digital nights just pushing Winlink traffic between members so at least the mechanics stay fresh. not the same as voice traffic under pressure but it helps.

one thing that really changed our drills was adding a dedicated logging position separate from net control. when NCS is also trying to keep a log AND manage the net it falls apart pretty quick. having one person just on the log made a huge difference in our last exercise.

this is actually really reassuring to read because im still pretty new to the ARES side of things and every exercise i've been to felt kind of... too smooth? like everyone knew what was coming and it didnt feel real. sounds like your group ran something that actually tested people which is the whole point right.

question — how did you set up the HF link part of it? that's something our group talks about wanting to do but we never actually have. was it just a couple guys with mobile rigs or did you have a proper portable setup deployed somewhere?