so i've been an ARES member for about 8 months now and mostly it's been nets and tabletop exercises and honestly i was starting to wonder if i'd ever actually get activated for something real. well last weekend we had that big 10k charity run in town and they needed comms coverage and our EC asked for volunteers so i signed up figuring it was low stakes enough to not mess anything up too badly.

ended up being stationed at mile marker 6 which was kind of in a dead zone between two repeaters and i had to switch freqs a couple times to find what was working. nothing went wrong exactly but there were definitely moments where i was fumbling with the radio while trying to write stuff on my ICS-214 and also a medic was asking me something and i just felt like i had 3 things happening at once. the net control guy was great though, super patient, never made me feel dumb for asking him to repeat traffic.

anyway just wanted to share because i feel like we dont talk enough about what the first activation actually feels like vs all the training. anyone else remember their first one? did you feel totally scattered or is that just me

That sounds really familiar honestly. My first activation was a search and rescue support thing back probably 2015 or so and I remember standing in a field trying to log traffic and hold a flashlight and keep my HT from sliding off the hood of someone's truck all at the same time. You figure out your system eventually — I ended up getting one of those clipboard things with a light built in and it made a huge difference.

The ICS-214 stuff gets easier too. After you do it a few times it's just muscle memory. The real value of those low-key activations like a fun run is exactly what you experienced — figuring out where YOUR gaps are in a situation where nothing critical is riding on it. Better to fumble with the freq change at mile marker 6 than at an actual disaster site. Sounds like you did fine though, net control patience is a good sign your group has good leadership.

yeah the multi-tasking thing is real and nobody really warns you about it in the training sessions lol. i passed my tech like 14 months ago and joined ARES pretty much right away because that was the whole reason i got my ticket, but the monthly nets feel kind of abstract? like youre just checking in and calling it a night. actually being deployed somewhere even for something small is a totally different headspace. glad it went well for you, those runs are good practice events for sure