so ive been in ARES for about 8 months now and finally got called up for an actual activation last weekend. county emergency management had a shelter set up because of the flooding over on the east side and they needed comms support between the shelter and EOC since their commercial systems were apparently having issues.

i was honestly a little nervous going in because all my experience has been nets and tabletop exercises, and those feel kind of fake you know? like everyone already knows the right answer. this was different. the EC had us set up a simplex link on the designated emergency frequency and i was handling message traffic between the shelter coordinator and the county EOC for about 6 hours straight.

traffic wasnt super heavy but there were a few moments where i had to ask for repeats and i felt kind of dumb about it but the shelter manager was really patient. wrote everything down in ICS-213 format which we practiced but it felt way more real when the info actually mattered. someone needed insulin and we had to relay that through proper channels and it hit me like ok this is actually why we train.

anyway just wanted to share because ive seen people on here wonder if ARES is worth joining if you never get activated. i was starting to wonder that myself. still processing it a bit but yeah it was worth it.

that feeling when the traffic actually matters is something else isnt it. i remember my first real activation back in like 2019, hurricane prep, and i kept second guessing myself on every transmission. but you did exactly right - accurate info, written down, passed correctly. that insulin relay is a perfect example of why we do this stuff. somebody's health literally depended on the message getting through clean.

the nervousness never fully goes away in my experience, even after years of this. but it kind of sharpens you up. the nets and AUXCOMM exercises feel slow after you've done a real one. glad your EC had things organized, ive been to activations where that part was a mess and it makes everything harder. sounds like you did good.

wow that's really cool, i just got my tech license a couple months ago and have been looking into joining ARES but wasn't sure if i'd actually be useful since i dont have much experience yet. did they have you doing anything specific to prep beforehand or was it just the regular monthly nets and that was enough?