NDF and BLM

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edgeman

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Does anyone happen to have a comprehensive and confirmed list of NDF and BLM frequencies (including aircraft) that are used in the Las Vegas area. I have programmed every frequency that I can find for these groups including national frequencies ( about 98 of them) and I just don't know which one's are good or not. Any help would really be appreciated.

Thanks all.

Kudos to the person that created the Win97 program.
 

SCPD

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edgeman said:
Does anyone happen to have a comprehensive and confirmed list of NDF and BLM frequencies (including aircraft) that are used in the Las Vegas area. I have programmed every frequency that I can find for these groups including national frequencies ( about 98 of them) and I just don't know which one's are good or not.

What is included in your 98 frequency program? Did you program everything assigned to the BLM from a frequency allocation chart?

Don't forget the U.S. Forest Service's Toiyabe National Forest on 169.875 and the National Park Service's Lake Mead National Recreation Area on 166.300.

If I could take a look at the 98 frequencies you programmed I might be better able to help you.
 

edgeman

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Here is my frequency list. I retreved these frequencies from a bunch of sources, (RR database, Southern Nevada scanner book). This is my list of what I bekieve are local frequencies. Some Thanks for the help.

BLM Mt. Potosi 169.400000
BLM 1 169.025000
BLM 2 172.600000
BLM 3 419.625000
BLM Tactical 172.675000
BLM Caliente 168.375000
BLM Las Vegas 168.525000
NDF Blue Diamond-1 168.225000
NDF Blue Diamond-2 171.675000
NDF Blue Diamond-3 171.900000
NDF 1 158.895000
NDF-2 159.450000
NDF Intergroup 151.520000
NDF White-1 154.280000
NDF White-2 154.265000
NDF White-3 154.295000
NDF Red-1 156.345000
NDF Red-2 158.865000
NDF Red-3 159.375000
NDF Red-4 159.270000
NDF Mobile-1 452.637500
NDF Mobile-2 453.200000
NDF Mobile-3 453.962500
NDF Main 158.895000
NDF Red Net-1 159.345000
NDF Mtn Top 159.450000
Minden Tnkr Bse 123.975000
NDF Air Dispatch168.650000
Air Guard 168.625000
Air to Air 122.566666
Air/Air-Sikorsky 122.575000
Air/Air-Lockheed 122.850000
Air/Air-Gulfstrm 123.575000
Air/Air-Aero 129.475000
Fire Ground 155.812500
Air to Air 163.100000
Ground to Air 166.687500
Air Cap 171.137500
USFS-HTF Net 171.475000
USFS-HTF Net 171.425000
USFS Tactical 1 168.775000
USFS Tactical 2 168.200000
USFS Net-1 169.900000
USFS Net-2 171.500000
USFS-Net 169.975000
USFS Tactical 3 168.600000
Smoke Jumpers 168.550000
 
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edgeman

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I also have some national fire frequencies. I programmed them in the event that they may be used out here.

Thanks for the help.

Air to Air 03 122.850000
Air to Air 01 122.925000
Air to Air 02 122.975000
Air to Air 04 123.025000
Air to Air 05 123.025000
Air to Air 07 123.050000
Air to Air 06 123.075000
Air tanker/base 123.975000
Air Traffic Adv. 135.975000
Air Tactics 02 166.150000
Air Tactics 01 166.675000
Air Tactics 05 167.950000
Air Flight 168.650000
Air Tactics 03 169.200000
Air Tactics 04 170.000000
Tac F-1 166.725000
Tac F-2 166.775000
FS Tac 01 168.050000
FS Tac 02 168.200000
Tac F-3 168.250000
I.C.S. Call Up 168.550000
FS Tac 03 168.600000
Common 01 408.400000
Common 03 418.050000
Common 02 418.075000
Common 04 418.575000
Logistics 01 414.650000
Logistics 02 415.400000
Logistics 03 415.500000
Logistics 04 417.300000
Logistics 05 417.350000
Logistics 06 417.500000
Logistics 07 417.800000
All Call 01 163.100000
Command 03 166.612500
Command 05 167.100000
Command 02 168.075000
All Call 02 168.350000
Command 06 168.475000
Command 01 168.700000
 

SCPD

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I will have to reply to this later, when I have more time. Not this morning as I'm headed to the big city, Bishop that is, for a doctor appointment. A quick glance of your list shows a lot of duplications and mislabeling. It will take a bit of time to go through the list and explain them all. I will do this before fire season starts. Oops, it has already started. A home lost in the last couple of days on a west side Reno fire.
 

SCPD

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Scott, I don't know if you have seen the thread I started in the California forum about fuel moisture levels in California and the rest of the west. 1000 hour fuel moisture levels are incredibly low right now across the southern half of California, most of Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico, all of Utah, and the western portion of Wyoming. The federal government has a funding method that is commonly called "severity" or severity funding. It is usually employed to keep staffing levels up when the fire season stays severe longer than average. The additional funding is above and beyond the budget in place that is based on an average year. Sometimes it is used during the traditional fire season when overtime is needed for longer shifts at stations and on patrols. I wonder if this supplemental funding will be available this spring? I wonder if any provision for severity funding is in the budget for this year at all.

During the last two years cuts of 20-30% were made that the public would not notice as they were made by only staffing engines, dozers, and some other resources, normally on 7 days per week, on a reduced schedule of 5 days per week. In that way the public observes that stations are still open, but probably don't notice that nearly 1/3 of them are closed on any given day. I would strongly suspect that this was not the choice of the agencies, especially at lower levels. It causes agency fire managers to have to play a shell game with resources. When a fire is reported, do we have an engine under this shell or do we have an air tanker under this other shell? Shall we shuffle the shells around differently? The biggest difference this 5 day staffing makes is that in some areas the primary engine is off, so initial attack starts when the second in engine would arrive under 7 day funding. If the primary engine in on in the area of a fire report the second in engine won't arrive until what would be the third engine arrival time under 7 day staffing. In my experience as a fire prevention officer driving a 125 gallon patrol unit, the arrival time of the second rig with water made the difference between an acre or two and several hundred and even thousands of acres on more than one occasion. There are other methods employed to try and make up for gaps when funding is cut or draw down occurs due to apparatus being sent to large incidents. One I'm very familiar with is placing two additional people with a patrol and then calling the patrol a Type 6 or Type 7 initial attack engine instead of a patrol. For me it was often "Patrol 21 plus one" as all Types of engines must have minimum of three. Once I was given a truck with a center console, there was only room for two, and this is a very common situation with patrol apparatus. Type 7's can have as little as 50 gallons of water, a far cry from the 500 plus on a Type 3 with 5 people. In a season like this is starting out to be, this might not be best compared to a shell game, rather as a game of Russian roulette.

With 2 billion dollars a week being spent in Iraq, other programs are being cut and there is a strong possibility of not having severity funding at all.
 
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Howdy exsmokey
What im guessing is the BLM and USFS are doing right now is staffing a rig with the full timers (year round personel). Thats my guess, but im really not sure, they could be calling some seasonals in. I only got to glance at your 1000 hour fuel post. All i know is i have a bad feeling about this season. The flashy fuels from last year werent knocked down by snowfall and the new growth is just about to pop up. Reno FD seems to be working brushfires everyday lately, some small some bigger. Snow levels in the tahoe basin are low, theres patches (large patches) of dirt everywhere!
 

Deepsky

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Has anyone ever heard any of the NDF trunked freqs? I haven't heard anything on them.
 
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Negitive, The NDF stations that were in Washoe County (Station 5, 8, and 10) left NDF and formed their own dept (Sierra Fire Protection Dist) as you probably know. They are dispatched on Reno Red. As for the NDF seasonal stations their on NDF Main 158.8950 still. And as far as i know they dont plan on switching off the VHF freq due to all northern nevada counties except washoe are VHF and have NDF Main on their radios.
 

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If NDF were to switch to NSRS or one of the two county trunked systems in Nevada (Washoe and Clark) they would lose the interoperability they have with federal natural resource management and wildland fire agencies such as the Forest Service, the BLM, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, and surrounding state agencies of the same type. Almost every natural resource/wildland fire management agency in the country uses VHF and this is not likely to change, especially at the federal level. This is due, in part, to this band's ability to handle mountain topography better than 800 MHz. In these two counties it is likely they will have to equip apparatus with mobiles and handhelds from each system, unless the trunked systems are designed with the ability to patch the systems. Since such patching has to be done through an electronic site and not direct from tactical radio to radio, it has disadvantages. One of the biggest occurs when tactical resources are working an area of a wildland incident that is in an electronic site shadow. This is not a problem when working simplex direct with other resources.

If NDF continues to give its direct protection areas to local districts then there won't be much need for them to operate on trunked systems. The remaining NDF need to communicate on the trunked system will occur during the use of inmate crews on Washoe County incidents, which I would think happens frequently.

How is interoperability between the Reno Fire Department and other local districts on the trunked system with federal agencies, especially when using federal air tankers, going to be accomplished?
 
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I know that the Sierra Fire Protection Dist runs 800Mhz radios (mobile & HT's) in their rigs along with VHF. Reno Fire runs with at least a VHF HT and also most likely a mobile in their appratus, due to not only them running wildand incidents but mutual ad to Storey County, Truckee Fire, etc. For wildland incidents in Washoe County they run the command on TM Main 158.7450 and usally use a white frequency for tactical. I also forgot to add the other reason NDF would not likely go over to NSRS. On wildland incidents here in the northern nevada area, agencies share the repeaters. For exsample say theres a incident on USFS land, and they cant access the FS repeater they can put the command on a NDF repeater or a BLM repeater, since they (NDF, BLM, and USFS) are all dispatched out of the same room at the Sierra Front Interagency Dispatch Center.
 

edgeman

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Exsmokey,
Thanks for the offer, but don't worry about it. I ended up going through all of those frequencies and removed the duuplicates and renamed them.

Most of these are from the National Interagency Fire Center and Sierra Front Interagency Dispatch Center. I don't know if they are every used in Southern Nevada, but I had the room in my scanner, so I put them in.

Thanks again and have a great day.
 

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Scott, thanks for the observations about NDF and others as far as radio is concerned. After posing the questions in my last post I took a little bit of time and looked up the websites of the Reno Fire Department and the Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District. This because my next question is whether the VHF system of Truckee Mdws. was still being used as my understanding, based on reading this forum, was the two departments had merged. I found out that this is not quite true. They are in a cooperative agreement to share some services and functions. That may not be the actual title of the agreement, but it reads like a coop agreement so I will call it that.

I did not have time to read through the entire agreement as much of it had to do with personnel matters. My quick look did not find any wording regarding radio systems ,however, I would think there is some in the document somewhere. The highlights of the agreement are the designation of one chief, having a shared dispatch center, and setting up response areas that make more sense as far as station location that get rid of the inefficiencies caused by boundaries between them. There is a section that speaks to station location and building, plus ownership of the facilities. I don't remember the details of this last point.

The overall perception I gleaned in this quick look is that they are still two separate entities, but are sharing resources. This leaves me with the question, how is dispatching done when a fire is solely in the jurisdiction of one or the other. Do they just transmit the dispatch on the trunked system when it is entirely within the city of Reno? Is the VHF system used solely when the reverse is true? Do they simulcast everything? Does Truckee Mdws. have two sets of radios, both mobile and handheld as I would assume? I believe the trunked system is managed by the county and Truckee Mdws. is a county agency so one would think they switched over to the trunked system as it was being developed, but the talkgroups for fire look very much like the old 400 MHz system that Reno had. Now that I know the two departments still have some autonomy it changes what I had assumed about the radio systems.

Reno carrying VHF radios reminds me of L.A. County Fire where each apparatus is equipped with a VHF handheld or several. Almost all of their tactical frequencies are on VHF and command, dispatch, and response are on UHF. The county interfaces with the Forest Service and Ventura County quite frequently (many times per day) so they need to be able to communicate on VHF. When they form strike teams for out of county assignments they need VHF as well for both federal and state jurisdiction assignments. I would imagine that any fire department that responds to state and federal jurisdictions must equip themselves with at least a VHF handheld and possibly mobiles all the time.

I remember, when I first started with the Forest Service, that even when agencies had VHF handhelds of their own, that both the FS and the other agencies did not have enough channels in the crystal radios to work most of the NIFC frequencies. We all had to be issued NIFC cache handhelds in order to work the incident. Initial attack was a mess as we had to send runners to the crews of other agencies or had to call our dispatchers to relay tactical traffic. Communications with aircraft was difficult as there was usually only one field pack set (not a handheld in the early 70's) on what was then called "Air Net" , which was 168.625. It was used as an air-to-ground for that one pack set, otherwise we had to call dispatch and have them relay traffic to aircraft. Air net was also air dispatch as aircraft did not have the Wulfsburgs at the time and they could not dial in the local jurisdictions. As air net was the only common frequency between National Forests it was used as sort of a dispatchers intercom. This is one of the reasons the Forest Service developed the north and south dispatch nets in California because air net was so congested. We also ran local incident tactical on the Forest Net simplex and remote bases and repeater traffic would interrupt us. Now add to all this confusion was the differing command systems of the various agencies with the Forest Service running LFO (Large Fire Organization) and others running who knows what. We also worked with a lack of mutual aid agreements and sometimes had to beg to get units from a nearby station to respond and it was done on a case by case basis with financial and administrative people getting involved where they would often nix something because they were worried about liability and reimbursement issues. "Well it took you a long time to pay our bill the last time so I really don't want to get us involved with you again" types of answers would come back to us. Many of the people in command would have big egos and would not accept interagency help, and would take the chances of having a fire get bigger rather than call the next closest resource in. The phrase often used was "we will kill our own snakes!" These even happened between adjacent National Forests such as the time a fire was spotted on the eastern slope of one mountain where the line between the Coconino and Kaibab National Forests ran. The Kaibab had resources closer to the incident than the Coconino but the fire was on their side of the line. One engine and my patrol unit sat in a station 4 miles from the fire on the Kaibab side and watched the fire get bigger while the Coconino turned down our offer to respond during the time they were sending their initial attack engine from Flagstaff, some 12 miles away with their second in units located 15 and 17 miles away. We sat and watched the smoke grow from our vantage point. Talk about stupid!

As far as I'm concerned "the good old days" really stunk in firefighting. During my career I saw how the entire collection of fire agencies really formed into one service and the color of your uniform and truck no longer mattered as much. However, I ran across some interagency friction right up to the time I retired. Things like agencies giving the other agencies the worst locations in camp for crews and also giving them the worst busses and drivers. But all in all ICS really made a difference not only in actual incident management but in helping the development of more and more realistic mutual aid agreements, and even further in integrating everyone in to one fire service. One large factor in this last point was the common qualifications everyone has to have. We started going to the same training sessions, having cool ones after class was over, going out to dinner with each other, etc. This really broke down the barriers.

Crap! Another long story from a retired person. Sorry!
 

SCPD

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edgeman said:
Exsmokey,
Thanks for the offer, but don't worry about it. I ended up going through all of those frequencies and removed the duuplicates and renamed them.

Most of these are from the National Interagency Fire Center and Sierra Front Interagency Dispatch Center. I don't know if they are every used in Southern Nevada, but I had the room in my scanner, so I put them in.

Thanks again and have a great day.

I start back to work at the end of next week so I'm real busy around the house trying to finish up the last winter projects I have time for. I haven't been able to look at your list. Even though you eliminated the duplicates there are some other problems with the list such as incorrect frequencies, the listing of input frequencies (which don't do much good), and incorrect names for frequencies. I will try to help you at on these when I get some time. I'm going to have to return to work so I can rest up from the winter!

I will still go through your list anyway as sometimes I pick up something I didn't know before when I do this. One frequency that caught my eye was a second one for the Humboldt portion of the Humboldt-Toiyabe which could be a repeater input or a new second repeater pair. I want to look at things like these and I have an old federal frequency assignment book that can help me with this as some of the federal system frequencies in Nevada have been used for 30 years or more.
 
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Good afternoon Exsmokey
I havent read the agreement between Reno and Truckee Meadows yet. But how i understood it (the way the media put it) Reno Fire took over Truckee Mdws.. Truckee Mdws appratus are still their lime geen color and still say Truckee Meadows FPD on them, but they also have somthing that says Reno Fire Dept, on them. Whether that be two logos on them or like Engine-16 (Washoe Valley) has Reno Fire Dept over side compartments.
As for the radio aspect of it. All metro stations (1 through 18 i think) are dispatched on the trunked system. When the call invloves a volunteer district the call goes on a similcast to the VHF frequency (158.7450 TM Main) and the metro station that is also responding is still dispatched on the trunked system, but they all respond on a trunked frequency (90% of the time the other 10% is a TM main assignment). There is a patch for TM main to the trunked system, and it does work. This is what a volunteer dist call sounds like

"Station-16 with Washoe Valley Volunteers respond to a medical emergency, reported shortness of breath, address of XXXX Old HWY 395, District-16 map page XXX Red Frequency assignment"

Now part of the reason i have heard from a some close VFD friends in washoe county is. The reason the volunteers have yet to fully go over to the trunked system is that, the paid firefighters dont want them too. They figure if they cant keep up with the calls going out they wont be kept around anymore. Reno Fire is very much against volunteer fire depts. If you get my point. A lot of VFD's in Washoe County have had to buy their own 800Mhz radios.
Does that help exsmokey?
 

SCPD

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firefighterbiddle said:
Good afternoon Exsmokey
I havent read the agreement between Reno and Truckee Meadows yet. But how i understood it (the way the media put it) Reno Fire took over Truckee Mdws.. Truckee Mdws appratus are still their lime geen color and still say Truckee Meadows FPD on them, but they also have somthing that says Reno Fire Dept, on them. Whether that be two logos on them or like Engine-16 (Washoe Valley) has Reno Fire Dept over side compartments.

Thanks for answering my questions Scott. I will have to read the agreement more myself, but on first glance it sure looked like the media oversimplified the issue. I heard many of the same reports via KOLO and others that they had merged, but a reading of the agreement sure makes it look like the "merger" only goes so far and that being the same entity is not the way it was designed.

Came accross this if interested - has a few aviation freqs for 2007 - Joe

Not really anything new here, but it is always good to get a new read on this. This could be the first time I've seen it officially stated that the 163.100 and 168.350 frequencies can be used for both a travel net of sorts and for tacticals on incidents. The the BLM Redbook seems to have more information than the National Interagency Mobilization Plan, which this year is the thinnest I've ever seen it. There must be a full copy available to those with passwords as the one posted for the public says almost nothing.
 

sigint1

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Exsmokey said:
There must be a full copy available to those with passwords as the one posted for the public says almost nothing.

You are probably right - seems like the info is getting sparser every year unless you come across some obscure document somewhere that someone wasn't supposed to put up in public but did - I agree with Scott - RFD did indeed take over TMFD - I also heard that one of the main reasons that TMFD still has their VHF radios was because of the volunteer stations - they can't afford to upgrade to the 800 MHZ system - sounds reasonable - I imagine that funding for these stations is probably pretty thin.
 
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