David's Directed Net Exercise

or, how to bring mass chaos to a room of radio operators

Originally created for the NCAC Institute, Spring 2003. Modified for the NCAC Institute, Spring 2004. This exercise is designed to practice directed net skills, whether you are an Emergency Coordinator (or assistant), Net Control Station operator, or net participant. While the exercise was originally designed to be carried out in a room without radios, this exercise can very easily be conducted over the air. Please not that if you are conducting this exercise over the air, the use of the "This is a drill" should precede all messages and traffic that could be perceived to relate to a real emergency. All portions of the exercise are figments of my over active imagination, or borrowed from existing exercises and drills. No infringement of any copyright is intended or implied. This exercise is made available to members of the Amateur Radio community and other communications personnel who may benefit from it. If there are things you would like to see added or improved upon, feel free to add them and drop me an email and I will add them to the next revision.

The Set Up

You will need some or all of the following items

  1. You need someone who has skill in directed net operations to oversee the exercise and help move things along. This person is the called the Coordinator.
  2. You will need a group of (willing) participants to play the rolls of Net Control Station(NCS) and the various other site operators.
  3. You may want a copy of the Procedure Sheets
  4. You may want a copy of the Operations Cards
  5. You may want to provide your operators with the various forms available, including the ARRL Radiogram, ICS-213 General Message Form, ICS-214 Unit Log, ICS-214a Individual Log or other forms you feel are appropriate.
  6. A deck (or two) of playing cards.

The Procedure Sheets, Operations Cards, Traffic Sheets and forms listed above can be downloaded here. They are in PDF form in a single ZIP bundle.

This game is best played with a minimum of 6 people (one for each location and one for NCS). It has been played with as many as 20. The more people you have, the louder it gets, the more chaos created.

You need to establish the following positions: Net Control (NCS), EOC, Hospital [1|2], Red Cross Chapter House, Shelter [1|2]. You can also establish any other required site, such as Salvation Army, Supply Truck(s), additional hospitals, regional control centers - it is limited by your imagination and the number of participants.

To Begin

The game is based on a mock incident. This can be anything from a plane crash to a weapons of mass destruction to some sort of mass casualty incident. The type of incident doesn't really matter unless you want to inject some additional realism into the exercise. Ideally, you have a group of displaced individuals that need to be transported to hospital, put up in shelters and coordinated from an EOC.

To begin, take a deck of playing cards and pull out the face cards except one. Shuffle the deck and put the face card in the stack near the top. Have each participant take a card. The one with the face card (I use the King of Spades) is the Net Control Operator. Of course, you can choose your NCS before hand as well.

Read the Alert Script or use your own.

The initial NCS station is manning the logistics net. The NCS operator may or may not assign an Operations NCS or the Coordinator may make the assignment.

Inform the NCS in standard tactical form that you need people to staff the locations established. It is the job of the NCS to make sure the people are deployed to their assignments. The deployment can be in any order.

Have the NCS begin calling for volunteers by suit or number. You can also use call sign suffixes (a-h, i-m, n-r, r-z for example). Once everyone has checked in, the NCS may start making the initial assignments. If you have more people than positions, break the group by suit colour or some other arbitrary break. The "left over" people become the second shift, which helps in the practice of shift changes.

The Exercise

Follow the timeline and walk through the various stages of events that occur. This game is scheduled to last about 30 minutes with one shift change, so it fits nicely into an 50 minute segment with lots of time to stop and explain things that come up.

Make sure to introduce elements of confusion and change. This keeps the operators on their toes, and makes sure they are paying attention to the accuracy of what they are doing. Depending on the skill of the operators, it could very quickly devolve into nothing but noise. Have FUN!

The Working

The Scenario

As stated before the actual scenario doesn't matter. The goal is to pass traffic. But if you need some ideas, it could be an airplane crash, a biological hazard, a natural disaster or a weapons of mass destruction event. It could even be the destruction of a widget factory affecting the neighbourhood around it.

Initially, the following locations are to be staffed: LogNCS, EOC, Hospital [1|2], Red Cross or Salvation Army Chapter (or both).

Read the Alert Script and start the clock. The scenario runs as follows (note time is in minutes elapsed since start of game):

0000 Game Starts. Alert Script is read. Logistics NCS is identified. Locations to staff are reported to LogNCS. LogNCS begins call up.

0005 Assignment Starts. LogNCS dispatches volunteers to their stations. If everyone is gathered at the front of the room, have them move to desks/chairs identified with each "location" to be manned. All stations check in the OpsNCS as the reach their locations. Check-ins will be random.

0010 Work Starts. Each location has a procedures sheet that requires the operator to "do some work," whether it is make an adjustment to bed counts or contact the net. At this point, the EOC begins to request bed counts from the hospitals, Red Cross (or Salvation Army or both) requests operators for shelters from the LogNCS. If you have the operators, this is a good time to also request operators to man supply trucks, casualty buses or other locations.

0015 Traffic Passing. One of the major failing points of most exercises is the inability of the operators to create and pass formal traffic. At this, point it is time to start passing traffic. Ideally, at this point a Liaison Station, coming from the national traffic system comes on-line to pass a message to the EOC. Suggested messages are below. It is also at this point when the hospital and shelter operators start having to generate messages. Depending on the complexity of the scenario you want to generate, the traffic could be prepared in advance and the operators practice passing it, or you can have the operators prepare it based on rough messages they are given (or dictated if you have enough people to play the roles of officials).

0020 More Work. The work continues as indicated on the procedure sheets. Bed counts are called for, shelter management issues pop up, etc. If you are going to do a shift change, now is the time to start calling or assigning your remaining operators to their locations.

0025 Work Continues/Demob Starts. If the exercise is only going to have one shift, this is the time to begin the demobilization part (which begins at 0045 in a shift game).

0030 Work Continues/Demob Continues. If the game is going to have a shift, by now the new operators should be settling into their positions and the old operators should be in full debrief mode. If there isn't a shift, the last of the demobilization activities should be occurring.

0035 Shift Change/Exercise Ends. Old operators should begin checking out of the net and the new operators should begin checking in. The new NCS operators should make notes of changes. You may change as many or as few stations as needed, add new ones or stand down others. If this is the end of the game, the last stations should be requesting permission to secure and the remaining NCS stations(s) should be closing their nets.

0040 Work Continues. The new operators get a chance to do some work.

0045 Work Continues/Demob Begins. Stations begin to demobilize based on the procedure sheets. If you have supply trucks or casualty buses in play, this is when they should begin to demobilize. Start with services at the periphery first, then move into the core.

0050 Demobilization Continues. At this point, core services are demobilizing. The last stations to secure should be the NCS stations.

EXERCISE ENDS Take a few moments to review some of the critical issues that came up. Level of noise and confusion, quality of traffic passed etc. Each game has its own unique flavor.

Procedure Sheets

These procedure sheets are meant to be used as follows: