Police Call only showed the frequencies licensed to a particular entity and thus didn't show that the Torrance FD had the Long Beach FD F1 in their radios as channel 9 (just a hypothetical). This makes things difficult if Torrance puts out a message for apparatus to respond to Long Beach on channel 9 for assignment. That was a shortcoming of Police Call Volumes 1-9, however the southern Calif detailed edition made up for that in just the area it covered by showing each agencies complete channel plan. Recently published books such as the Scannerstuff Southern California Frequency Directory list each channel in LAPD's radios including those of cooperating agencies. It would seem to me that the paper directories would have to be purchased for information like that because RR decided to not show these "duplicate listings."
Now the RR database listing for the L.A. County Fire Department shows how their VHF tactical radios are programmed. It includes duplicates of the Angeles National Forest frequencies depending on the channels in the radio. In a multi-agency response you may hear a tactical channel assignment given out over a dispatch or command frequency for all arriving resources to use channel 113, which is channel 1 or simplex Forest Net for the Angeles NF. The present policy for the database would have us wondering what the tac assignment is and force us to try to listen to everything, instead of locking out channels to narrow our focus on one incident that is particularly interesting or extremely important, such as living in the Angeles NF urban interface.
This is why I submitted the entire channel plan for each Forest, Park and BLM District. I've been dispatched to incidents with instructions to use "channel 14 168.775 SQF channel 3, Fire Net Simplex." I may hear traffic while enroute that everyone is to switch to channel 14 6. As a listener I may not have heard the initial instructions regarding frequency use because my scanner was locked on another frequency at the time, or I might be arriving in the vicinity (as a scanner listener) after the announcement was made and hear some of the Inyo folks saying "the tactical is on 14." If I know the Inyo's channel plan then I can look up 14 and keep it in the program to scan and lock out other frequencies.
I would think we are trying to build a database that is at least as good as the paper directories, especially if the publishers of the directories go out of business.
This is my observation of the situation. It is likely it won't make any difference in the long run.
Another observation is that the Wiki site is difficult to use. From the initial layout it is difficult for me to look up the NIFC frequencies because it seems hidden when it is lumped into "common frequencies" along with business itinerants. Another suggestion is that common federal frequencies or any others that are used nationwide should have a nationwide page for the federal government. That way a listing of NIFC frequencies won't be different depending on the state you are in or how recent someone in a particular state submitted the NIFC frequency information or if that person has picked up on some changes made to the NIFC channel plan. When I noticed this I wrote the Wiki section on the NIFC channel plan (which I haven't updated as I should) but if I have trouble finding it after many months of not navigating to it, how does someone who is not familiar find it?
This is probably an exercise in futility as some of these policies seem to be oriented top down instead of bottom up, or some reasonable compromise of the two. Then again it might be due to server space and such. There may be some other reasons too, one should not interpret this policy as something handed down from above us to purposely cause inconvenience for no reason, although I would be curious of that reason.
Now that I've taken a break to write this, it is back to finishing up taxes for the two elderly folks I care for. When I return to this forum is something I can't predict . . . . .
