so i finally got to participate in a full scale simulated disaster exercise through our local ARES group and honestly it was way more eye opening than i expected. we were running a scenario where the county EOC had lost all normal comms and we had to coordinate shelter-in-place messaging across three different served agencies at the same time.

the thing that got me was how fast things fell apart when operators werent sure who had net control. like we had practiced the individual pieces but when everything was running at once people just started calling in whenever and the frequency got absolutely stepped on. net control did a great job eventually getting it sorted but those first 20 minutes were kind of a mess honestly.

also learned that my go bag setup is not as ready as i thought. my mag mount antenna fell off my car twice during repositioning and i was running off a battery that i hadnt load tested in like 6 months and it showed. lesson learned there for sure.

anybody else run drills like this and have stuff that surprised them? curious what other groups do differently because i feel like we could improve how we hand off net control when someone needs to leave or step away

yeah the net control handoff thing is something a lot of groups struggle with, we had the exact same issue during a Skywarn activation a couple years back. what helped us a lot was designating a secondary net control before the exercise even starts, someone who is already on freq and monitoring, so the transition is literally just one announcement and everyone already knows who it is. sounds simple but it made a huge difference.

the battery thing is real too. i now put a reminder in my phone every 3 months to do a proper load test on all my field batteries. lost count of how many times ive shown up to something with a battery that looked fine sitting on the shelf but couldnt hold voltage under a real load. a good battery analyzer is worth every penny if you do a lot of emcomm work.

sounds like your group ran a solid exercise though, the messy ones are honestly where you learn the most. a drill that goes perfectly usually just means you didnt push hard enough on the scenario.

this is making me want to actually join my local ARES group, ive been putting it off for like a year now. do you need a lot of experience before they let you participate in the drills or is it ok to show up as a newer ham? i only got my tech about 8 months ago and i dont want to be the person who makes the chaos worse lol