so last weekend was my first actual activation with our local ARES group and i honestly wasnt sure what i was getting into. ive been attending the monthly nets and did the ICS-100 and 200 online courses like they asked but nothing really prepares you for showing up at an actual EOC with your go-bag and just... waiting to be useful, you know?

the event was a county-wide emergency drill, simulated flooding scenario. i got assigned to shadow one of the more experienced guys who was handling liaison comms between the EOC and a couple of shelter sites on 2m simplex since repeaters were being treated as unavailable for the exercise. it was actually way more organized than i expected but also kind of humbling because i realized how much i dont know about net control procedures when things get busy and multiple stations are trying to check in at once.

the net control guy was incredible though, just calm and clear the whole time, managing traffic like it was nothing. made me want to get way better at that. anyway just wanted to share since ive seen a few people here asking what ARES is actually like in practice vs just the paperwork side of things. happy to answer questions if anyone has them, though im still pretty new to all this myself

that's pretty much exactly how my first activation went too, a lot of hurry up and wait and then suddenly everything happening at once. the ICS courses help but yeah until you're actually sitting in an EOC with served agency people walking around and real (well, simulated) stress in the room it's hard to get the feel for it.

the thing that helped me most was just doing more nets honestly. our group runs a weekly directed net specifically for training and the EC lets people take turns doing net control even if they mess up, which is how you learn. if your group doesnt do something like that it might be worth suggesting. after maybe a dozen times running net control for a low-stakes weekly net I felt way more ready when it counted. also the ARRL emcomm level 1 course online is worth doing if you havent already, goes a bit deeper than just the ICS stuff

simplex only drills are so valuable and a lot of groups skip em because it's more work to set up. good that yours took it seriously. what radio were you running if you dont mind me asking, just curious what people are showing up with these days for go-bag stuff