ARES SAR Night Drill

ARES March SAR Night Drill

Notes from KC0VVU

After planting the transmitter, I was chosen to be the target for the dog, that's when
it got interesting.

I hid in the trees along the creek, it turned out to be a better hiding place than I thought.
After sitting for about and hour, I got up to stretch my legs. When I stood up, I saw
lights slowly moving in different directions. So, I got back down, and waited...and waited
and waited... Then I heard car tires and turned around, it was a car. Did it find me?
Nope. The car just drove by, where if they got out, they could have found me. Several
more cars missed, they just drove by, no one got out, or called, or anything. I saw smaller
lights, so I figured they were people on foot. One search team, the second search team,
they both missed me! Several times the beams from their flashlights hit me, but it seemed
like I wasn't even there. The search teams didn't leavethe path to check the brush, they
just kept on walking.

I had my radio on, so I decided to see what was going on, after listening to 220 for a
while. I switched to 2 meters and heard one station come in "Net Control this is Dog team"
So I tried to hear what they were saying to the NC. What it turned out to be was a request
to make contact with me because the dog was having trouble. So I called net control
and found out that they were just on the other side of the road. Apparently the dog
was having trouble finding me so they made a request that I move closer to them, I did.
Still nothing, at that point the searchers on the team had spotted me but the dog still
had not. They had me wait a little longer, to see if the dog could find me (at that
point I was standing in the field, the burnt one). The dog eventually found me, and we
headed back.

Notes from KC4WCG

I was assigned to transport teams into the area and to transport out victims. Over all I thought things went about normal with the usual mass confusion in the early stages. I believe that a major contributing factor to that confusion was that the event leader was attempting to have too large a span of control. The research on which the NIMS system is based on has shown that one person can not command more than 5 to 7 personnel directly. A more likely command and control system might have been to identify teams, have them appoint a team leader, have that team leader be tasked by a Strike Force leader… See below SAR ICS Tree