so i finally got activated for the first time last weekend, we had a pretty significant storm system move through the county and the EOC called us up friday evening. ive been in ARES for about 8 months now and done maybe four or five training nets and one SET exercise but nothing real until this.

i was assigned to a shelter over at the middle school and my job was basically traffic handling between the shelter manager and the county EOC. thought i would be on HF but they had me on a simplex frequency with one of the club's loaner handhelds, which was fine, range was good enough from that location. what surprised me was how much waiting there was. like genuinely hours of just sitting there monitoring, then a burst of traffic, then more waiting. i guess i expected it to feel more urgent the whole time? the shelter coordinator barely knew i was there for the first couple hours which was also a little awkward.

anyway it was a good experience overall and i feel like i actually understand now what all the training nets were trying to prepare me for. curious if others had similar first activation experiences or if mine was kind of unusual

that sounds pretty typical honestly. the waiting is the job, like 90% of it. people come into ARES expecting it to be constant radio chatter and its really not, most of the time youre there as a backup that hopefully doesnt get used much. the shelter coordinator thing is also super common, a lot of served agencies dont really interact with ARES much outside of actual emergencies so they dont always know how to work with us until things get hectic.

the SET exercises try to simulate some of that but its hard to replicate the real thing. sounds like you did fine though, being there, monitoring, staying available - thats the job. glad the simplex coverage held up, that can be hit or miss depending on the terrain.

yeah my first one was similar, lots of sitting around. i brought a book the second time lol. one thing i learned early on is to introduce yourself to the served agency point of contact right when you arrive and kinda explain what you can do for them - makes a big difference in how they treat you the rest of the activation. otherwise they really do just forget youre there. good on you for getting out there though, a lot of people join ARES and never actually show up when it counts