so i finally got called up for an actual ARES activation last weekend, county EOC needed radio support because the storm knocked out some repeaters and they had spotty comms with a couple of the shelter sites. ive been doing the monthly nets and the SET exercises for about a year and a half now so i figured id be reasonably prepared but man the real thing is just different.

nobody tells you how much of it is just sitting and waiting and then suddenly everything happens at once. we had three operators in the EOC and the EC was trying to coordinate with the shelter operators at the same time as he was talking to the served agency liaison and i was handling the message traffic log and honestly i kept second guessing every entry. like is this the right format, did i get the time right, that kind of thing. the training covers ICS forms and whatnot but when youre actually doing it in a noisy room with someone talking over your shoulder its a completely different animal.

the HF stuff ended up not being needed which was kind of a bummer because thats what i trained hardest on, it was mostly VHF simplex to the shelters and one NVIS link that the more experienced guy handled. but overall it went okay i think and the emergency manager seemed happy with us. just wanted to share i guess, curious if anyone else remembers their first activation being a bit of a blur

yeah that sounds about right honestly. my first real activation was a wildfire thing maybe six years ago and i remember thinking i was going to be super useful and then spending four hours basically just monitoring a frequency and logging check-ins. which is actually exactly what they needed but it felt so anticlimactic compared to the exercises lol. the waiting is real, and then when traffic does pick up your brain kind of goes into overdrive trying to keep up. sounds like you did fine though, the fact that the EM was satisfied is genuinely the benchmark. a lot of new folks overthink the format stuff, consistency matters more than perfection in a real event.

the log thing tripped me up too my first time. i practiced ICS 309 traffic logs in the kitchen at home and thought i had it down but then in the field i kept hesitating on time format and whether i should be logging every single transmission or just formal messages. ended up asking the EC mid-activation which wasnt ideal haha. worth clarifying that stuff with your EC before the next one so its one less thing on your mind when it actually counts