Field Day - Make It An Incident!
Field Day is coming. It's always the fourth full weekend in June. And besides being a major operating social event, it provides the kind of operational training that no other event can match - other than a full blown disaster. A few years after getting my own ham license, I worked in Homestead in Hurricane Andrew relief efforts. I found that what I used most were the skills I'd learned during Field Day.
In the present day, we find that the disasters where we would be called upon to use our skills will be administered by FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Among the changes FEMA brings to disaster operations is the need for our Served Agencies to report to FEMA if they are to be reimbursed for their disaster operations. And the only way to report to FEMA is to use FEMA authorized forms.
As we practice Field Day operations under conditions that would be typical in a post disaster situation, we can use the FEMA forms for our own "incident" - Field Day - giving us training in dealing with the bureaucracy before we experience it for real following a future disaster.. Everyone needs logging sheets. Why not use ICS Form 309 Communications Log? You need a Message Form to get bonus points for sending a message to the ARRL Section Manager, so why not use ICS Form 213 General Message. These Incident Command System (ICS) forms, and others (many of which would not be needed for ham radio operations), can be found on the Brevard Emergency Amateur Radio Services (BEARS) web site at http://forms.k4eoc.org
Please consider adopting these forms for your own operations. Knowing where and when they can be used will be an invaluable skill. Possible as important as operating the radios themselves.
This document is http://forms.k4eoc.org/fieldday.html