so we finally got our county ARES group to do a proper simulated emergency exercise last saturday and wow there were some things that went sideways that nobody expected. the scenario was a major flooding event that took out the main EOC building so we had to operate from a mobile command trailer instead. seemed simple enough on paper.

biggest thing we learned honestly was that nobody had actually tested the trailer's power setup under real load conditions. we had like four stations running plus the laptop for logging and the inverter started making a noise nobody liked about 45 minutes in. turns out the shore power connection at the trailer had a bad ground and we were essentially running half the exercise on battery backup without realizing it at first. could have been way worse.

the other thing that caught us off guard was simplex coverage from the trailer location. we just assumed we'd hit the main repeater fine but the terrain between the trailer and the repeater site is way more problematic than anyone thought, we basically had a dead zone for anyone stationed at the south end of the county. had to scramble and set up a portable digipeater which worked but we werent really prepared for that to be necessary.

anyway curious if other groups have had similar surprises during exercises and what changes you made afterward. we're trying to write up a proper after action report and want to make sure we're not missing anything obvious that other groups have dealt with

yeah this sounds really familiar actually. our group did something similar a couple years back and the power situation is almost always where things fall apart first. we started requiring everyone to actually log their battery voltage at the start and every hour during exercises just so people get in the habit of monitoring it. sounds basic but you'd be surprised how many operators just assume the power is fine until it isn't.

the simplex dead zone thing is a real issue and honestly one of the most valuable things any group can discover during an exercise rather than during an actual event. after we found similar gaps we actually drove every major road in the county with a handheld just mapping where we lost contact with the repeater and where we didn't. took a couple saturday afternoons but now we have a pretty solid picture of where we need a portable linked node or at least a relay operator. might be worth doing something like that for your area if you havent already.

for the after action report i'd really emphasize putting specific names or positions next to every lesson learned otherwise it tends to just become a list of abstract problems that nobody actually fixes before the next exercise

im pretty new to ARES stuff, just joined a few months ago, but i was reading this and it made me think -- do most groups actually practice with all the real equipment or do people sometimes just simulate parts of it? like i wasnt sure if the point was to practice the radio procedures or also the whole physical setup side of things. our EC mentioned exercises but we havent done a full one yet and im trying to understand what to expect