so we finally got our county ARES group to do a proper SET last saturday and honestly it was a real eye opener. we had about 14 operators show up which was better than expected but the whole thing kind of fell apart in the first hour because nobody could agree on who was net control when our primary NCS had a family thing come up last minute. like we had a backup plan on paper but nobody had actually practiced it so when it mattered everyone just kind of looked at each other.

the other thing that got us was message handling. we do ICS-213 traffic during real activations but half the people at the simulated shelter site had never actually filled one out before, they just figured theyd figure it out when the time came. spoiler: they did not figure it out when the time came.

anyway the good stuff - our simplex fallback actually worked better than expected when we pretended the repeater went down, and one of the newer guys surprised everyone by having his go-kit totally dialed in with a backup power setup that ran clean all day. so not all doom and gloom. just wondering if other groups have done tabletop exercises before the actual field stuff to work out these kinks, because im thinking we need that before the next SET

yeah the NCS succession thing is a really common problem and it doesnt get talked about enough. we burned ourselves on that exact issue during a real activation a few years back, not just a drill. what ended up working for us was basically doing a mini net every month where we rotate who runs it, so at least 4 or 5 people are comfortable taking the chair if needed. its not a perfect fix but it means when someone drops out last minute theres always somebody who isnt completely deer-in-the-headlights about it.

the ICS-213 stuff - honestly we do a paper exercise at our monthly meeting maybe twice a year where we just sit around a table and pass actual message forms around and critique each other. sounds boring but it catches a lot of bad habits before they cause problems in the field. a lot of operators know the form exists but have never actually routed one through a served agency and watched what happens on their end when its filled out wrong.

tabletop before the SET is absolutely worth it. even a 90 minute kitchen table thing where you walk through the scenario verbally shakes out assumptions that nobody knew they were making.

im pretty new to ARES, just joined up this spring, and reading this is kind of reassuring in a weird way because I was at a SET a few counties over as an observer and thought maybe I was missing something because it also seemed a little chaotic. good to know its not just us I guess. the go-kit thing you mentioned - do most people build those themselves or is there a standard kit your group recommends? I keep seeing different setups and cant figure out what actually matters versus whats just nice to have