Maybe something changed in the years since your post about the file listing all pl tones and locations for the National Forests, Exsmokey, because I can't seem to locate it. IF you have any direction on where to locate this I would be greatly appreciated.
I can find the frequencies to listen to but am looking for not only the input/output freqs (as they are in the DB) but also the tones and where the repeaters are located for when I need to program my radio.
Thanks
The channel plans and tone lists were removed from the frequency listing pages. I made submissions to the database to ensure the repeater listings were accurate and complete for each forest. That information was deleted and not transferred anywhere. That information was supposed to be shown on wiki pages, however, no one has written the information for the wiki yet covering all the National Forests in California. I tried to, but I have a lot of trouble with the coding of rows and columns, as well as trying to provide space between each National Forest. I don't have time to figure out the vagaries of how to write pages on wiki. I have information for each BLM District and NPS unit as well as the National Forests, but have the same trouble getting it on the wiki.
This situation is not convenient for those like yourself that need the information for programming their radios for legal use on federal and state agency radio systems. The database seems to be trending toward a listing based entirely on location by counties and those that need to find information based on agencies and functions such as natural resource management are going to have to look up things one county a time. I don't agree with that and your example of needing to program a radio is one reason why.
duster, I did not notice that I had not responded to your question from 2009. The Plumas system is somewhat unique. They have a lot of microwave remote bases where simplex can be used to contact dispatch, ranger stations and fire stations. It is likely that there are areas on the forest where the microwave remotes don't provide coverage so repeaters are used in those blind areas. The Angeles has a similar system but doesn't seem to have as many remote bases.
Other than those two forests I've not been on a forest that has such a system. The reason repeaters are favored is to enable other mobile units, out of simplex range, to hear both sides of the conversation. On my first forest, the Kaibab, in the 70's, there were no repeaters. If one of my prevention units spoke to dispatch and I could not hear them I would have to ask dispatch to repeat the traffic or call a lookout to relay it to me. After spending all this time to find out what the unit said, it could turn out to be something I did not need to hear. I had enough on my plate already and being in this situation was very time consuming. The Kaibab has since built a system based on repeater only communications. My second forest, the Cibola in New Mexico, had a similar situation. During my third year on that forest a microwave backbone was installed along with repeaters at those microwave sites as well as those needed for coverage the microwave site repeaters could not provide. When the mobile units could hear each other it improved communications right away. We could then hear the mobile traffic on other ranger districts, which are quite far apart on the Cibola, and get important fire information such as monsoonal moisture flow and fire behavior observations.
One trend I'm seeing now is elimination of forest net simplex for unit to unit communications. This type of communication is now carried on project or work nets and/or the four new federal common frequencies, sometimes referred to as crew nets. The NIFC tacs are to be used on working fires only, at the permission of the dispatcher. We used to use Tac 2, 168.200, the original crew net long back when, for all kinds of comms including recreation and for chatting between apparatus enroute to fires. It would drive us nuts when we were traveling up the Central Valley to fires up north and have to listen to tactical traffic on every fire in the Sierra in order to talk with each other about where to eat, get fuel, etc.
