so i finally got called up for an actual activation last month — county EOC needed amateur radio support during the flooding event we had here in the valley. ive been doing the monthly ARES nets and the SET exercises for almost two years now and honestly thought i had a pretty good handle on things but man, real world is just different.

the biggest thing that caught me off guard was how much waiting there is, and then suddenly everything happens at once. during the SET we always had kind of a structured flow but at the actual EOC there were periods where nothing was coming through on the nets for like 45 minutes and then the served agency liaison dumped three traffic requests on me at the same time. my ICS message handling was fine i think but i kept second-guessing myself on the proper format for the radiograms we were passing to the section.

also nobody told me to bring food. that sounds dumb but i was there for 11 hours and the EOC had some sad vending machines and that was it. the experienced guys all had go bags with snacks and everything worked out. lesson learned i guess.

anyway curious if other people felt the same way their first time — like the training is good but it doesnt fully prepare you for the real thing?

yeah that gap between training and a real activation is real and i dont think there's any way around it honestly. i've been involved with ARES for maybe 12 years now and i still tell new members that the SET exercises are great for muscle memory on procedures but they can't simulate the ambient chaos of an actual EOC with real stress and real served agency staff who have no idea what we do or why we're there.

the traffic surge thing you described is super common. what i do now is keep a simple log sheet right in front of me and just write down requests as they come in, numbered, so i dont lose track when things pile up. sounds obvious but in the moment it helps a lot. and yeah, the go bag with food and water and a change of clothes is not optional, that's a lesson everyone learns the hard way at least once. sounds like you handled it well though, the fact that you were self-aware about the radiogram formatting means you were paying attention to the right stuff.

the food thing got me on my second activation not my first so dont feel bad lol. first one was only 4 hours so no big deal but the second one ran long and i was starving by hour 7. now i just keep a little bag in my car with some granola bars and a water bottle specifically so i dont have to think about it.

im still pretty new to ARES stuff, only been doing it about a year, but even i noticed how different the real thing feels. the net control during our last SET was really patient and there was no real pressure but when i monitored the actual event net it was just... more tense i guess? like people were focused in a different way. i want to get called up for the next one, still waiting for my chance.