Sacramento County

Amateur Radio Emergency Service

Training

Being an Emergency Communicator requires discipline and practice. By practicing and perfecting your craft, the experience you gain will help you be cool, calm, and collected on the radio – whether you are communicating during an emergency, or a special event.

Sacramento County ARES offers these items listed as training. Some are for specific topics and others are for general use.

Please review the training available and feel free to participate.

ARES and FEMA Training

Typical Duties

ARES team members maybe called upon to help in the field, at a shelter, or in an Emergency Operations Center (EOC). When joining such efforts there are expectations on each participant to understand the basic function of the mission and of the location – including the segregation and assignment of duties.

To give structure to these efforts, the country has adopted the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and the Incident Command System (ICS) which describes the roles and tasks of each person. Those guidelines also describe how teams communicate between themselves, between other teams, and ultimately at the end of the event.

As emergency communicators, we are certainly required to be familiar with these structures.

The ARRL and our ARES guidelines outline the training needed for each of us to effectively operate as part of an emergency incident team.

Required Training

ARES publishes a Standardized Training Plan Task Book where we can track your progress in accomplishing the assigned training courses along with demonstration of typical radio operations and wiring construction.

Training Locations

The training courses we want to see you accomplish can all be taken online.

Continued Eligibility

In addition to the training requirements, our Sacramento ARES team functions better when we all participate. To remain active with Sacramento ARES we would like to see accomplish all of the training and:

  • Participate in Monday night nets at least twice a month
  • Attend at least six (6) ARES meetings in a given year
  • Participate in at least one activation or event each year

Additional Topics