so i finally got called up for an actual activation last weekend, not just a drill. county emergency management had us supporting a pretty bad flooding situation about 30 miles east of here and they needed comms relay between a couple of shelters that had lost their landlines and cell was totally swamped.

i've been going to the monthly ARES nets and two or three SET exercises since i got my general back in the spring but nothing really prepares you for when it's actually real, you know? like during the drills everyone is kind of relaxed and joking around but when you show up to an actual shelter and the EC is pointing at a table and saying 'you're on comms here until i tell you otherwise' it's a different feeling.

ended up being about 6 hours on HF mostly, some VHF between the shelter and the county EOC. honestly i fumbled a few things early on, kept forgetting to say the net control's callsign before mine which is embarrassing but they were patient with me. the bigger hams in the group were really solid, watching them handle message traffic was something else.

anyway just wanted to share since i know some folks here have been on the fence about getting involved with ARES. its worth it even if the trainings feel repetitive sometimes. also curious if anyone else had jitters their first real activation or if thats just me

oh man yeah the first real one is totally different from a drill. i remember mine was a winter storm about four years ago and i showed up thinking id be all prepared and then just kind of froze for a minute when i realized there were actual people depending on the info moving through us. you get past it pretty quick once you settle into the rhythm of the net but yeah that initial moment is real.

the thing about forgetting callsign order, dont sweat it, everybody does that when the adrenaline kicks in. net control at a real activation has seen it a hundred times. the fact that you were there and on the air is what matters, the procedural stuff tightens up over time and after a few more you wont even think about it.

also side note -- do you guys do ICS-100 and 200 training in your ARES group? our EC made that basically mandatory a couple years ago and it helped a lot with knowing how to operate within the bigger emergency management structure rather than just kind of floating around not sure who to report to.

that's really cool you got to do a real one so soon after joining. i've been a tech for about eight months and keep meaning to look into my local RACES group, i think we have both ARES and RACES active in this county but i honestly dont fully understand the difference between them yet. like i know RACES is tied to government and ARES is ARRL but in practice do they just work together or is it two separate nets and activations?