so our ARES group finally did one of those full-scale simulation exercises we've been talking about doing for like two years. the scenario was a major flood cutting off the county EOC from three shelter locations, no internet, no phone, just HF and VHF to get traffic through. i've been doing emcomm stuff for about six years now and honestly i still learned a lot from this thing.

the good stuff first — our net control guy did a great job keeping things organized, we had solid comms on the 2m repeater for most of the shelter check-ins, and the ICS forms we've been practicing actually got used correctly for once. like people actually wrote down the right info and passed it properly, that felt like a win.

but here's where it fell apart. when we simulated the repeater going down (which obviously is exactly when you need it most), half the guys had no idea what simplex frequency we were supposed to fall back to. we'd briefed it but apparently it didn't stick. and then on the HF side, conditions were not great that morning and nobody had thought to pre-plan an alternate frequency in case 40m wasn't working. we ended up burning like 20 minutes just figuring out where to meet up on the band.

also — and this is a big one — one of our newer members showed up with a HT that was barely charged and no backup power. during a real event that person is basically a liability at that point, not an asset. we had a whole thing about that afterward.

anyway just curious if other groups have been running drills lately and what kinds of stuff has caught you off guard. feels like no matter how much you prep there's always something.

yeah the simplex fallback thing is such a common problem and honestly it doesnt matter how many times you put it in the plan if people dont actually practice it until their hands do it automatically. we had almost the exact same situation a couple years back during a SET. net control called the fallback and just... silence. took probably 90 seconds before anyone checked in and in a real event that 90 seconds feels like forever.

what we started doing after that is running short unannounced mini-drills like once a month, nothing big, just hey we're going simplex for the next 20 minutes figure it out. it's helped a ton with muscle memory. the HT battery thing is also huge, we basically made it a rule that if you show up to an activation or even a drill without at least one spare battery or a way to charge in the field you're getting a friendly but firm conversation. some people take it personally at first but like, that's the whole point of this stuff right.

this is really interesting to read as someone who just got their ticket last year and is trying to get into ARES stuff. i went to one meeting and honestly felt pretty lost with all the ICS terminology and net procedures. like i want to help but i also dont want to be the guy showing up with a dead radio lol. do most groups have like a training track for newer people before they'd put you in a real drill, or do you kind of just get thrown in?