so we had our first real activation last weekend, not just a drill but an actual callout for the county EOC because of the flooding situation up near the reservoir. ive been with our ARES group for about eight months now and done maybe four or five SET exercises and a couple of the weekly nets but nothing real.

honestly i was kind of nervous going in. i wasnt sure if my logging would be fast enough or if id freeze up on the radio when it actually mattered. we were running Winlink and also keeping a paper log as backup which the EC was pretty insistent on and im glad he was because the laptop did a weird thing around hour six and we lost about 20 minutes before we got it sorted.

the thing that surprised me most was how much of the job is just... waiting. and staying ready. and not cluttering up the frequency with chit chat. which sounds obvious but when youre sitting there for three hours and nothing is coming through you kind of have to fight the urge to key up just to feel useful. the experienced guys were really calm about it and that helped a lot.

anyway we were there about 11 hours total and it went okay i think. the served agency folks seemed genuinely appreciative which felt good. just wanted to share i guess, and also ask if anyone has tips for staying sharp mentally during those long quiet stretches?

that quiet period thing is so real and nobody talks about it enough in training. every exercise is kind of go go go but a real activation can have these long dead spots and yeah you gotta stay disciplined. what i usually do is use that time to double check my gear, make sure my antenna connections are still solid, review any messages that came through, keep my paper log current even if nothings happening. basically give yourself small tasks so your brain doesnt wander too far.

also 11 hours on your first real one is no joke. good on you for sticking through it. the paper log backup thing your EC pushed for is exactly right, ive seen digital setups fail at the worst times and if youre not keeping parallel records you can end up in a real mess trying to reconstruct a comms log after the fact. sounds like you've got a solid group.

congrats on getting through it, thats a big deal for a first activation. I've been doing ARES stuff for a while now and honestly the mental fatigue is underrated as a challenge. Like technically you might be doing very little but staying alert and ready for hours is genuinely tiring in a different way than a busy net.

one thing our group started doing is rotating operators every 90 minutes or so during long activations if we have enough people, even just stepping outside for ten minutes helps reset your focus. depends on your staffing obviously. also if you havent already look into ICS-100 and 214 forms if your served agency uses them, knowing how to fill out an activity log the way they expect it makes a big difference in how the relationship goes long term.