so i finally joined our county ARES group about 4 months ago after getting my general, been doing the weekly nets and some of the online training through ARRL and honestly i feel pretty good about the theory side of things but next month our group is doing an actual activation drill with the county EOC and im kind of nervous about it

like i know what ICS is supposed to be and i understand net discipline and all that but theres a difference between reading about it and actually sitting in an EOC with a real served agency depending on you. our EC has been great about explaining things but i dont want to ask too many basic questions and look like i dont belong there

anyone been through their first drill activation and have any tips? mostly worried about the radio side, like how formal is it really, do they expect perfect procedure every single transmission or is there some grace given to newer operators during training exercises

oh man i remember my first one, it was a simulated hurricane exercise and i was so worried i was going to mess up a message or miss a callsign and the whole thing would fall apart. reality is way more low key than you're imagining, at least in my experience. your EC knows you're new and any decent served agency liaison knows these drills are partly FOR training newer people.

the thing that helped me most was just listening for the first chunk of time before jumping on the radio. get a feel for how your specific group runs things because every ARES group has slightly different internal habits even if the overall ICS structure is the same. and dont stress about perfect ITU phonetics every single time, as long as youre clear and the message gets through accurately thats what matters. bring a notepad, write everything down, and ask your net control to repeat if you miss something. thats not weakness thats just good operating

yeah what he said. also just a practical thing -- make sure your go-bag is actually ready a few days before, not the morning of. i showed up to my second drill (learned from the first one) with fresh batteries, my ICS forms printed out, extra pens, and a copy of our local ARES plan and it just made everything so much less stressful. the radio stuff you can figure out on the fly but scrambling for a pen when someone's trying to hand you a message form is not fun lol