so i finally got to participate in a full scale simulated disaster drill with our local ARES group and honestly i wasnt ready for how different it feels from just operating normally. we were running nets in support of a fake earthquake scenario, coordinating shelter check-ins and resource tracking through the EOC and man there were so many things that fell apart that i didnt expect.

biggest thing for me was message handling. i do a decent amount of ragchewing and even some contest stuff but formal traffic felt completely different under pressure. i kept wanting to shorthand things or skip the phonetics when the frequency got busy and our net control had to come back to me twice. kind of humbling honestly.

the other thing that got us was simplex comms falling apart when we tried to reach the shelter about 14 miles out. we'd been relying on a repeater that was supposed to have backup power but nobody had actually tested it recently and during the scenario they called it as 'destroyed' so suddenly we're scrambling to figure out who could hit who direct. turned out our frequency coordinator had done some path testing months ago but that info wasnt documented anywhere useful.

anyway just thought id share in case anyone else is thinking about getting into ARES or RACES stuff. definitely worth doing even if it exposes how much you dont know. curious if anyone else has run exercises and has lessons learned to share

yeah the repeater dependency thing bites everyone at least once. we had almost the exact same scenario play out during a county-wide exercise a few years back, except ours was a winter storm drill and the repeater was 'iced over' or whatever the incident commander decided. suddenly nobody could talk to the hospital because everyone had programmed the same machine and nobody had simplex freqs memorized or even written down somewhere accessible.

after that our EC basically mandated that everyone keep a laminated card in their go-kit with at least three simplex working freqs and the local NVIS-capable HF freqs for when VHF just isnt gonna cut it. sounds simple but it made a real difference in the next exercise. also started doing monthly simplex-only nets just to keep people comfortable with it. nothing fancy, just check-ins on a designated simplex channel so people remember it exists.

the message handling thing is real too. ICS 213 forms feel awkward until you've done them enough that they're automatic. if your group doesnt practice formal written traffic regularly it really shows in a drill. took me probably six months of monthly training nets before i stopped second-guessing myself on the format

this is making me want to actually join my local ARES group. ive been putting it off because i only got my general last spring and figured id wait until i felt more confident but reading this it sounds like the exercises are kind of how you get confident in the first place? or am i misreading that