so i've had my general for about 8 months now and kept seeing ARES mentioned on here and at my local club meetings and i finally just showed up to one last tuesday. honestly wasnt sure what i was walking into, like i thought it was going to be very military-ish or something formal with people in uniforms haha. it was just a bunch of guys and gals in a church basement with folding tables and a bunch of radios set up.

they did a kind of tabletop exercise where they simulated a county-wide power outage and had to figure out who would cover which repeater and how ICS forms get relayed and stuff. i sat in the back mostly just watching but the EC was super welcoming and had me pair up with a more experienced guy to shadow him through the exercise. ICS-100 and 200 came up a lot, apparently you need those before you can really participate in an actual activation.

anyway just wanted to share because i was kind of intimidated before going and it turned out to be really worthwhile. has anyone else done the FEMA IS courses to get their ICS certs? wondering how long that actually takes and if theres specific ones that ARES groups tend to require beyond 100 and 200

yeah the ICS stuff is pretty standard across most ARES groups, most around here want 100, 200, and then IS-700 which is the NIMS intro. some groups also ask for IS-800 if youre going to work anything at the federal coordination level but honestly for county-level activations the first three are usually enough to get you on the roster.

the courses are all free on the FEMA EMI site and 100 and 700 you can knock out in an afternoon if you sit down and focus. 200 takes a bit longer, theres more material. dont stress about the tests too much, theyre open book basically and the passing threshold isnt brutal. once you have the certs just email your EC the completion certificates and they'll add you to the credentialed list.

sounds like you found a good group btw, the tabletop exercises are honestly where you learn the most before a real activation comes along. better to make mistakes on paper than during an actual event.

I did my first real ARES activation last spring during the flooding we had, and let me tell you nothing quite prepares you like the real thing even with all the training. we were running a net for about 14 hours straight passing health and welfare traffic between two shelters and the EOC and by hour 6 my logging was getting sloppy and i had to really slow myself down. the ICS forms thing is real, NTS message format and ICS-213 kept coming up constantly.

but yeah start with the FEMA courses, they're genuinely useful and not as dry as you'd think once you see how it all connects to what you actually do on the air. your EC can probably point you to any local specific requirements too since some counties have their own supplemental training they want before an activation. welcome to the rabbit hole i guess.