so i finally got to participate in an actual ARES activation last weekend - not a drill, real deal, local flooding had knocked out some normal comms infrastructure and our EC called us up. ive been a member of our local ARES group for about 8 months and done maybe 4 or 5 of the training nets plus the SET in october, but nothing had ever actually gone live before so I wasnt sure what to expect.

honestly the training prepared me better than i thought it would. the ICS stuff we did, the net discipline, knowing when to transmit and when to just listen - all of that clicked into place pretty fast once things got real. what i DIDN'T expect was how much of it is just... waiting. like you're deployed, you're at your post, radio's on, and then a lot of it is just being there and being ready. which is fine, totally fine, just not what I pictured in my head.

couple things that caught me off guard: my HT battery died faster than i thought it would running high power for extended periods (obvious in hindsight), and i realized i hadn't actually tested my external antenna setup in the field before that day which was kind of dumb on my part. it worked but there was a stressful few minutes getting it sorted.

anyway just wanted to share, if you're on the fence about joining your local ARES group and actually putting in the time for the training nets and exercises I'd say go for it. the real activation felt very different from just ragchewing on the local repeater. curious if anyone else had surprises their first time out

the battery thing gets everyone at least once, dont feel bad. i've been doing ARES stuff for probably 12 years now and I still remind newer folks constantly - whatever you think your runtime is, cut it in half if you're running any kind of power above the minimum. and that's before you factor in cold weather, older cells, all that. a lot of guys in our group now carry at least two spare packs and one of those USB charging banks that can top off an HT in a pinch.

the waiting is real too. i always tell people at our training nets that emcomm is 90% logistics and patience and maybe 10% actual radio operating. the folks who struggle most are the ones who showed up wanting to feel like they're in a movie. the job is to be a reliable, calm presence when served agencies need you. sometimes that means a lot of sitting with a radio on your hip doing nothing, and that's actually a success if nothing went wrong.

glad your first one went well. did your EC do a debrief afterward? ours always does and that's honestly where I've learned the most over the years, hearing what the served agencies actually thought of our support.

this is making me want to actually show up to one of our local ARES nets, I joined the group like a year ago but havent really been active in it. keep meaning to go to the monthly meeting and then something comes up. what's the training like, is it mostly just net procedures or do they do other stuff too? our group seems pretty active but i feel like i missed a lot of the foundational stuff already being this late to it