so i finally participated in one of those full-scale simulated disaster drills our county ARES group puts on every year. i'd been meaning to join for like two years and kept putting it off because honestly i wasnt sure i knew enough to be useful. glad i finally went.

the scenario was a major flooding event that knocked out all the normal comms infrastructure — cell towers down, EOC needed traffic relayed between shelters and the hospital. they had us set up a net and start passing formal messages using ICS 213 forms. i have practiced NTS traffic handling before but doing it under time pressure with people actually depending on the info was a totally different feeling.

couple things i learned the hard way: first, my go-bag setup looked great at home but i forgot to fully charge the spare battery for my HT the night before so i was scrambling. second, i had never actually practiced setting up my portable dipole in the dark and it took me way longer than it should have. small stuff but it adds up fast when theres a simulated "mass casualty" event happening around you and the net control is waiting on you.

anyway the whole thing was really eye opening. anyone else done these kinds of exercises? curious what scenarios your groups run and what caught you off guard the first time.

yeah the battery thing gets everyone at least once. i showed up to an exercise a few years back with a radio that had maybe 20% charge because i assumed i had topped it off. lesson learned pretty quick when i had to borrow someone elses HT by hour two.

the ICS form stuff is really where a lot of people fumble too, not because its hard but because most of us just dont practice it enough in normal day to day radio stuff. our group started doing a monthly simplex net specifically so people can practice passing formal traffic without the pressure of a full drill. has helped a lot with the newer members feeling more comfortable. the other thing we added to our exercises is a deliberate comms failure midway through — like the net control station goes silent and someone else has to step up and take over. that one scenario taught us more about our actual readiness than almost anything else we had done before.

this is really making me want to get more involved with my local ARES group. ive been a tech for about a year and a half and keep hearing about these exercises but always felt like i didnt have enough experience yet. sounds like thats kind of the point though, you learn by actually doing it not by waiting until youre ready.

question — do you need like specific equipment to participate or can you just show up with a basic HT and figure it out from there?