Alberta Wildfire Season 2018

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Jay911

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I guess it's as good a time as any to remind folks of how to follow Alberta Wildfire, also known as Alberta Agriculture & Forestry - Wildfire Branch, during this fire season.

I'm going to use a fire near me today, known as "Calgary Fire 60" (CWF-060), as an example. It's visible on the Alberta Wildfire website on the status map (as of this posting).

The Firenet system is a repeater network spanning the province's forested areas. It carries traffic for AAF as well as other agencies like Conservation Officers. Firenet repeaters often cover more than one county, so the repeater for the incident you want to listen to may not be in the county that the fire is in. Today's fire near Cochrane started on Firenet 129, which is on Moose Mountain in Kananaskis Improvement District, but comms have partially moved over to channel 222 in the Municipal District of Bighorn. There is typically a fire base operating as a dispatch center - in the Calgary area, it's Calgary Fire Base, in the northwest part of the city. Wildfire staff including helitack teams, wildland engine crews, ground crews, and etc., will be on these channels. Note: The Firenet repeaters are currently listed in various counties throughout the province (in the RR database), so you may have to hunt for them if you don't know which one you are looking for.

When at a scene, the above crews (except the fire base, obviously) move to a simplex channel. There are roughly 50 frequencies called Fireline channels, listed in the Agriculture and Forestry section on this site. A lot of locations have a couple of channels that crews use as default channels in their zone. In Calgary, it's channels 36 and 38, and CWF-060 is working off 38. (And before you ignore the simplex channels, I've heard the air crews communicating on the Fireline channels too, which you can obviously hear from a good distance away.)

Tankers, if they operate, will be on air band frequencies listed in the Agriculture and Forestry frequencies. "Advisory" is generally the channel you're going to want to listen to first. Right now, the fire boss and bird dog aircraft, plus the helicopters, are working on the "Advisory Primary" channel of 129.8. I also heard some faint, staticky comms on "Tanker-Birddog 2", which was possibly the tanker that was returning to Rocky for refilling (and I'm not sure why - I thought Springbank was a base) communicating with someone. Take note that airband frequencies aren't necessarily exclusive - at least one of the freqs listed in the RR DB is also used as a 'company' frequency for a commercial airline working out of Calgary.

Finally, if municipal firefighters are involved, you will hear them on their own radio systems. Cochrane Fire and Rocky View Fire were working together on this fire initially, and were heard on both Cochrane's UHF radio channels and Rocky View's AFRRCS talkgroups. Also, if the municipal crews and the Wildfire crews communicate together, they may use some of the frequencies in the Provincial Common section of the RR DB, particularly the "Firetac" channels.
 

kayn1n32008

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I guess it's as good a time as any to remind folks of how to follow Alberta Wildfire, also known as Alberta Agriculture & Forestry - Wildfire Branch, during this fire season.

I'm going to use a fire near me today, known as "Calgary Fire 60" (CWF-060), as an example. It's visible on the Alberta Wildfire website on the status map (as of this posting).

The Firenet system is a repeater network spanning the province's forested areas. It carries traffic for AAF as well as other agencies like Conservation Officers. Firenet repeaters often cover more than one county, so the repeater for the incident you want to listen to may not be in the county that the fire is in. Today's fire near Cochrane started on Firenet 129, which is on Moose Mountain in Kananaskis Improvement District, but comms have partially moved over to channel 222 in the Municipal District of Bighorn. There is typically a fire base operating as a dispatch center - in the Calgary area, it's Calgary Fire Base, in the northwest part of the city. Wildfire staff including helitack teams, wildland engine crews, ground crews, and etc., will be on these channels. Note: The Firenet repeaters are currently listed in various counties throughout the province (in the RR database), so you may have to hunt for them if you don't know which one you are looking for.

When at a scene, the above crews (except the fire base, obviously) move to a simplex channel. There are roughly 50 frequencies called Fireline channels, listed in the Agriculture and Forestry section on this site. A lot of locations have a couple of channels that crews use as default channels in their zone. In Calgary, it's channels 36 and 38, and CWF-060 is working off 38. (And before you ignore the simplex channels, I've heard the air crews communicating on the Fireline channels too, which you can obviously hear from a good distance away.)

Tankers, if they operate, will be on air band frequencies listed in the Agriculture and Forestry frequencies. "Advisory" is generally the channel you're going to want to listen to first. Right now, the fire boss and bird dog aircraft, plus the helicopters, are working on the "Advisory Primary" channel of 129.8. I also heard some faint, staticky comms on "Tanker-Birddog 2", which was possibly the tanker that was returning to Rocky for refilling (and I'm not sure why - I thought Springbank was a base) communicating with someone. Take note that airband frequencies aren't necessarily exclusive - at least one of the freqs listed in the RR DB is also used as a 'company' frequency for a commercial airline working out of Calgary.

Finally, if municipal firefighters are involved, you will hear them on their own radio systems. Cochrane Fire and Rocky View Fire were working together on this fire initially, and were heard on both Cochrane's UHF radio channels and Rocky View's AFRRCS talkgroups. Also, if the municipal crews and the Wildfire crews communicate together, they may use some of the frequencies in the Provincial Common section of the RR DB, particularly the "Firetac" channels.


This fits with pretty well with what I found during the Westlock County fire east of Clyde on May 12.

Mind you it was channels appropriate for the Lac La Biche zone rather than the Calgary zone.

You would have to be close for most of it, even the aircraft were under pretty low level and were scooping pretty close to the fire. People Legal would have had a hard time hearing the ground ops. If you were more than 5 or 6 miles away, you probably only could hear the aircraft, and county/mutual aid structural units with mobiles, not using TalkAround.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
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