so i finally got activated for a real event last weekend, not just a drill. our county ARES group got called up to support the served agency during a pretty bad stretch of flooding in the eastern part of the county. ive been a member for about 8 months and done maybe 3 or 4 nets and one tabletop exercise but nothing like this.

honestly wasnt prepared for how much hurry-up-and-wait there was. i showed up at the EOC with my go bag and HT and my little J-pole in a tube and just kind of stood around for like 45 minutes before anyone told me where to go. then it was suddenly very busy all at once and i was trying to log traffic and pass messages and keep track of who was on which repeater and it was a lot to juggle simultaneously.

the thing that really caught me off guard was how much of the actual communication coordination happened on simplex once the main repeater got congested. i was not as comfortable operating simplex as i thought i was, definitely something to work on. also the ICS stuff - i knew the basics from taking IS-100 and IS-700 but applying it in a real activation with real stressed out people is a different animal entirely.

anyway it went fine overall, nobody died because of anything i did wrong lol, and the EC seemed happy with how the team performed. but i just wanted to share because i think a lot of people who are just doing monthly nets might not realize how different a real activation feels. worth doing more realistic training exercises for sure.

yeah the simplex thing gets everyone the first time. we run a simplex-only drill every spring for exactly that reason and people are always surprised how hard it is when you lose the repeater crutch. propagation does weird stuff, you have to actually think about positioning, and you realize pretty quick that your HT with a rubber duck isnt gonna cut it when someones three miles away and behind a hill.

sounds like you handled it well though. the hurry-up-and-wait is just baked into emergency work at every level, not just amateur radio. the ICS stuff clicks a lot more after your second or third real activation, just takes reps. glad your EC had a good after-action, does your group do a formal debrief? we started doing written AAR forms a couple years ago and it made a huge difference in actually learning from each event instead of just shaking hands and going home.

this is really good to read, im in a similar spot - been a member for maybe 6 months and havent been activated yet. our EC keeps saying to take IS-200 too not just the 100 and 700, have you done that one? i keep putting it off becuase the online courses are kind of dry but maybe i should just get it done before something happens and im standing there confused about span of control or whatever.