so we finally got around to doing a full scale simulated emergency exercise with our local ARES group on saturday and honestly it was kind of humbling. we've been talking about doing one for almost two years and kept pushing it back so i'm glad we actually pulled the trigger.

the scenario was a major flooding event that took out the EOC's primary comms and we had to establish a net, pass ICS-213 traffic, and relay health and welfare messages to a shelter about 12 miles away. on paper it sounds straightforward. in practice we found out real fast that like half our members had never actually sent a formal radiogram before and a couple people didn't even know where their go-kits were.

biggest lesson for me personally was that we spend way too much time talking about gear and not nearly enough time actually practicing message handling. like i have a really nice setup, dual band HT, a small HF rig in the car, decent antennas — but when someone handed me a stack of ICS forms to pass i realized i was rusty as heck. embarrassing honestly.

also the net control thing is a whole job by itself. the guy running net control did great but it was obvious he needed a logging assistant and we hadnt planned for that. by hour three he was pretty frazzled trying to keep up with traffic and acknowledge stations at the same time.

anyway just wondering if other groups have done these kinds of exercises and what surprised you the most. or if you have tips for making the next one more realistic without it turning into a complete mess.

yeah this resonates a lot. we did something similar about 18 months ago and the message handling thing was exactly our weak point too. its one of those skills that sounds easy until you're actually doing it under simulated pressure with someone waiting on the other end.

one thing that helped us a lot was doing smaller tabletop drills in between the big exercises — just like four or five people sitting around practicing ICS-213 traffic passing on a simplex frequency. low stakes, no one watching, just getting the muscle memory down. made a huge difference by the time we did our next full exercise.

the net control logging issue is real and honestly i think every group underestimates it. we ended up designating a dedicated logger who wasnt allowed to transmit at all, just focus on keeping the log clean. sounds simple but it took us two exercises to figure that out.

this is really cool to read about, im pretty new to all this (got my technician about 8 months ago) and just joined a local ARES group but we havent done anything like a full exercise yet. kind of nervous about it tbh because i dont really know ICS forms at all and barely know how to check in to a net properly without second guessing myself. is there like a good way to prepare on your own before doing a group exercise so you dont feel completely lost?