so we finally ran our annual simulated emergency test last saturday and honestly it went better than i expected in some ways and way worse in others. thought id share some stuff because i know a few folks here have been thinking about setting up their own county group exercises.

the good part first - our net control handled the traffic load really well, better than last year for sure. we had about 23 operators check in which is more than we've ever had for a drill. someone had the smart idea to pre-position a couple operators at the EOC and the hospital and that made a huge difference vs trying to relay everything through the repeater.

the bad part - and this is where it got humbling - we had two operators whose go-kits completely failed them in the field. one guys battery was dead, just dead, he hadnt tested it since the spring. another operator couldnt remember how to connect to winlink and had to be walked through it over voice which kind of defeats the purpose. we also realized our ICS message forms were all outdated versions and some of the served agency people noticed and were not thrilled about it.

the thing that surprised me most though was how fast simplex comms fell apart when we moved to the alternate frequency. like half the group just... wasnt there. turned out several people had programmed the wrong offset or just had the wrong freq entirely written down from an old roster. basic stuff but it bit us hard.

anyway curious if others have run into similar things and what you changed after the fact. we're already talking about doing quarterly go-kit checks which i think is long overdue honestly.

the battery thing gets me every time. we had the exact same issue at our last SET, guy shows up with a 100Ah LiFePO4 he's super proud of and it was sitting at like 20% because he'd been running stuff off it in his garage and forgot. now our group has a rule that you have to log your battery voltage the night before any activation or drill and report it at check-in. sounds overkill but it takes 30 seconds and it's caught a few people off guard already.

the winlink thing is a real problem too, and honestly i think we need to run those digital drills more often as standalone exercises not just tacked on at the end of a voice net when everyone's already tired. when someone's fumbling with Vara and Pat under stress conditions for the first time in six months it's not gonna go well. we do a monthly winlink check-in now, just a simple ICS-213 to our district, keeps everyone's fingers on it.

the simplex freq issue is something I'd fix immediately - laminated cards in every go-kit. not a digital file, an actual laminated card. people look for that stuff when they're stressed and their phone battery is also somehow dead.

this is really helpful to read, im still pretty new to ARES and just did my first drill as a participant a couple months ago. i was one of those people who was honestly not sure what i was doing half the time even though I thought i'd prepared. nobody tells you how different it feels when theres an actual net control calling your callsign and expecting a report in a specific format vs just practicing at home by yourself.

the ICS form thing - do you have a good source for where to get the current versions? i downloaded mine a while back and now im not sure if theyre right either.