so I've been a ham for about three years now and finally felt confident enough to volunteer for our county ARES group's simulated emergency test back in October. I was really looking forward to it because I'd been to the training meetings and figured I had a decent handle on things. spoiler: I did not have as good a handle as I thought lol

the biggest thing that caught me off guard was just how chaotic the net control situation got when we had multiple stations trying to check in at once. I know the theory, wait for a break, give your callsign, whatever — but in practice when you're actually stressed and people are stepping on each other it's a different animal. I also didn't realize how much battery I was going to burn through. brought one 7ah SLAB thinking that was plenty for a few hours of HT use and was down to like 30% by hour four. nobody told me to bring a backup, or maybe they did and I didn't take it seriously.

also the ICS paperwork thing — we had to fill out ICS 213 forms and pass them as formal traffic and honestly I had practiced this exactly zero times beforehand. the EC was patient with me but I could tell I slowed things down.

anyway I'm not trying to complain, overall it was a really valuable experience and I signed up for the next one already. just curious if other people had similar "oh no" moments their first time out, or things you wish someone had warned you about going in

oh man the ICS forms thing is SO real. I remember my first SET years ago thinking I knew what I was doing and then completely blanking on the message format under pressure. there's this weird thing that happens where all the stuff you kinda half-learned in training just evaporates when someone hands you a radio and says "okay go."

the battery thing I'd add to that too — I always tell newer folks in our group to bring at least double what you think you need. a SET that's supposed to go three hours has a way of turning into six once command starts extending the scenario. and if it were a real activation after a hurricane or whatever, you're not going home when it gets inconvenient. we actually had a guy in our group show up to a real activation after a bad storm with nothing but a handheld and a half-charged battery bank. he was offline by noon and basically just became a warm body standing around.

the net control congestion thing gets easier with experience honestly. after a few exercises you start to develop a feel for timing, like you can almost hear the gaps coming. but yeah first time is rough, nobody's going to fault you for it. the fact that you noticed what went wrong and signed up again is honestly the whole point of doing these exercises.

yeah the paperwork side always surprises people. i did a tabletop exercise with our RACES group a while back and half the room hadnt touched an ICS 213 since their ARRL emcomm course like two years prior. we ended up spending more time sorting out the forms than actually doing radio stuff which was kind of embarrassing but also genuinely useful to know about before a real event.

one thing our EC started doing is running a short 20 minute drill every few months thats specifically just message handling practice, nothing else. no net control drama, no scenario, just here's a form, send it, receive one, log it. boring but it works. might be worth suggesting to your group if they dont already do something like that