Individual training
- FEMA independent study (free, online): IS-100, IS-200, IS-700, IS-800. Many EOCs require these before granting access.
- ARRL Emergency Communications courses (EC-001 and up).
- SKYWARN spotter training — one evening, run by the National Weather Service.
- First aid and CPR — routinely more useful than any radio skill.
Group exercises
- Weekly net — the baseline. Attendance is the single best predictor of activation performance.
- Simulated Emergency Test (SET) — the annual ARRL exercise.
- Field Day — not an exercise officially, but it tests every skill an activation needs. See Field Day.
- Winlink Wednesday and similar digital drills.
- Joint exercises with the served agency — the only way to discover that your radios and their procedures do not match while it is still cheap to find out.
What exercises reliably reveal
Dead batteries, an antenna nobody can put up in the dark, a laptop with an expired password, and a frequency list nobody printed. That is precisely the point of running them.