More than 70 people took part in the exercise, including SAR teams from Dunedin, Stewart Island, Balclutha and the Catlins.
The exercise was based on two scenarios, involving a special-needs group getting lost in Bethunes Gully, in Dunedin, and a Japanese couple becoming separated at Moonlight, in Queenstown.
"It's a management team exercise and you have to develop the characters and scenarios," exercise organiser Senior Sergeant Brian Benn said on Saturday.
"We put as much realism into it as possible.
"So we have them talking to real helicopter pilots, or real people with special needs. It's a serious business.
"When the balloon goes up, someone's life is at stake, so we treat this very seriously."
Three Dunedin special-needs people who took part in the 2005 Winter Special Olympics - Robyn Harrison, Sara Perkins and Brodie Carvalho - helped with the exercise.
"Making it as realistic as possible allows us to target the learning areas we need to target.
"It enhances the skills of the management teams, without having to have 100 foot-soldiers running around in a full field exercise.
Field exercises are actually a lot easier to organise than this.
"We've also mixed the teams up, so they get used to working with people from other areas. It brings people into using the same systems."
New Zealand Search and Rescue programme manager Pete Corbett, of Christchurch, said he had designed the exercises to be as realistic as possible.
"Typically, we have found trying to manage field resources and management resources at the same time compromises the exercise. So the trend is to do it as a simulation.
"The scenarios are based on real searches that occurred in different areas some years ago.
"It's important that it's as plausible and realistic as possible," he said.
"So, in the case of the Japanese couple, there's a certain amount of domestic abuse in the relationship, so the suspicion is that she may have done a runner.
"There's an element of search and quite a large element of investigation, to negate that."
Mr Corbett said the weekend provided "an opportunity for people to work together and breaks down boundaries".
