so i finally got off my butt and actually participated in a simulated emergency exercise with our local ARES group after lurking on the sidelines for like two years. i honestly thought it would be kind of boring or just guys checking in on a net and calling it a day but it was nothing like that.

the scenario was a major flooding event that took out the main EOC's internet and phone lines and we had to establish backup comms between the EOC, the hospital, and two shelter sites using only HF and VHF/UHF. sounded simple enough on paper. in practice it was a mess in the best possible way.

first thing that went wrong - and this is embarrassing - i showed up with my go-bag but forgot my power cable for the radio. had to borrow a anderson powerpole adapter from someone else. also realized my antenna wasnt tuned for the frequency we were actually using, i had been practicing on 40m at home but the net was on a different segment and my SWR was terrible until someone helped me sort it out.

the biggest lesson for me was that message handling under pressure is completely different than doing it in your living room. i got flustered trying to write down a Winlink message while also listening to voice traffic on another radio. like i could not do both at the same time at all. the experienced guys made it look so easy.

anyone else have stories from drills or real activations where you realized your prep wasnt quite where you thought it was? curious what stuff people learned the hard way

oh man the power cable thing happens to more people than you'd think. i showed up to a real activation after a windstorm a few years back and had everything except the mic for my HF rig. just... left it on the desk at home. had to operate through Winlink only which actually worked out fine but still.

the thing about message handling under pressure is real and its something i dont think you can really train for just sitting at home. the drills are so valuable for exactly that reason. we did one a couple years ago where they intentionally fed us bad or incomplete information in the messages to see if operators would just blindly pass it along or flag it. most people just passed it. thats a problem in a real event because garbage in garbage out and it can actually cause harm if the EOC is making decisions based on wrong info.

sounds like your group runs good exercises. a lot of ARES groups around here do the bare minimum unfortunately. keep going to those drills, it really does get more comfortable after a few times through it.

yeah i had a similar moment at my first drill when i realized i had no idea how to actually format a proper ICS-213 message under time pressure. i had read about it but reading and doing are very different things lol. the nets i normally hang out on are so relaxed that actual structured message traffic felt like a completely different hobby almost.

one thing that helped me was practicing sending Winlink messages from the field like just going to a park or something with a battery and the laptop and doing it for real, not just from my shack. the environmental stuff like wind noise and people walking by and your hands being cold actually matters more than you expect.