so i finally participated in my first full-scale simulated emergency exercise with our local ARES group and i have a lot to process honestly. we were doing a scenario where a major storm had knocked out the EOC's normal comms infrastructure and we had to establish a net from scratch using only go-kit equipment. sounds straightforward on paper right?

well first thing that went wrong was that two of our most experienced operators showed up with gear they hadn't tested since last year's drill and one of the HTs had a dead battery pack. not a dead battery - a dead pack, like the cells had swelled up and the thing wouldn't take a charge at all. so right away we're short one operator effectively because he's scrambling around borrowing equipment.

second thing, and this is the one that really stuck with me, was how much harder message handling is under simulated stress conditions. i've passed traffic before on the regular tuesday night net and it feels pretty routine. but when someone's feeding you a simulated casualty report with multiple fields and there's background noise from the generator they brought and the net control is trying to juggle three stations at once... i flubbed a message and had to ask for a repeat twice. felt embarrassing but the group lead said that's exactly why we drill.

anyway i came away with a long list of stuff i want to fix in my own go-kit and i'm curious if anyone else has war stories from drills or actual activations where something unexpected taught them a lesson they still use today

the battery thing is so real, that exact scenario has happened at almost every drill ive been part of at some point. we actually made it a rule in our group that you have to do a full power-on test of every piece of go-kit gear at least 30 days before any scheduled exercise so there's time to fix stuff. doesnt always happen but it cuts down on the dead-on-arrival equipment problems.

the message handling stress thing is something i dont think you can really simulate perfectly but you can get better at it. what helped me was practicing ICS-213 forms at home, like actually writing them out by hand under a time limit with the radio on in the background playing some recorded net audio just to add distraction. sounds silly but after a few sessions it became way more automatic. the other thing is honestly just more reps on traffic nets, even when everything is calm, because the muscle memory carries over better than you'd think when things get chaotic.

we had an activation a few years back during actual flooding and the thing nobody expected was how emotionally draining it was just sitting there for six hours even though nothing technically difficult was happening. just the weight of knowing it was real. that's something no drill fully prepares you for.

yeah the generator noise is brutal, we had a drill where someone brought a cheap generator and parked it like ten feet from the operating position and everyone's audio was just wrecked. learned real quick that your go-kit should probably include a longer extension cord than you think you need so you can push that thing further away lol

also i'd just say don't feel bad about the message repeat thing, asking for fills is the correct procedure and net control should expect it especially from newer operators under drill conditions. the guys who never ask for repeats are usually the ones copying garbage into their logs and not saying anything