2019 Interagency Hotshot Crew Intra-Crew Communications

[Paysonscanner]

I'm temporarily getting a late uncle's second home in Mammoth Lakes, CA ready for sale. I brought my late husband's voluminous notes with me to work on, trying to sort out stuff that is out of date and is of no use keeping. I came across a sheet he printed titled "2008 Intra-Crew Plan." It concerns the need for crews to talk within their crew for various needs like gettng equipment and supplies to certain places during a shift, talking with each other in fire camp, etc. They listed the 4 2005 narrowband assigned common federal frequencies. This is what the plan shows (all simplex)

163.7125 National Intra Crew
167.7125 Primary IA & Incident
168.6125 Secondary IA & Incident
173.6250 Tertiary IA & Incident

Now IA means initial attack, my dad, an old fire guy that started with the Forest Service in the late 40's says IA is usually the first burning period, 10 am-6 pm or the first 24 hours of a fire. The sheet says "National" is not to be used on incident, just at the home unit for getting ready and for travel. They encouraged digital operation with a NAC to keep from hearing other crews. They also said tone guard for tx and rx could serve the same purpose.

My hubby & I never heard any traffic on it, except for once on CA 99 5-10 years ago when we passed a hotshot crew from down south and they were on "National" talking about where to stop for lunch. We lived in a dinky west slope/foothill Sierra NEvada county for over 40 years. Anyway, this sheet got me to thinking, is this still the plan. I did some Google work and came up with a 2019 memo that says the 4 freqs. are still being used for intra crew comms. There have only been a couple of changes. 1st, they got rid of the National - Primary IA & Incident labels. and the restriction on the use of National. They are now approved to use for travel and at incident logistical use.

163.7125 Intra-Crew 1
167.1375 Intra-Crew 2
168.6125 Intra-Crew 3
173.6250 Intra-Crew 4

2nd, only tone guards are to be used. Every hotshot crew in the nation (over 110 now) are assigned a tone. I'm not sure if they will all come from the nationwide standard 16 tones or the full list of, I think, its about 38 tones total in the U.S. The crews can find a channel, any one of them, that has the least amount of interference but only uses the tone assigned by them.

There is still the same direction, that these are used for logistical needs only, no tactical traffic allowed.

I hope that some find this thread useful and interesting??! I'm new to RR and I think I've only started one other thread.

 

[ko6jw_2]

There are literally dozens of tactical frequencies and my experience is that they are assigned to each individual incident. I live in Southern California and in major fires they can be all over the spectrum. I have banks in my radios preprogrammed with tactical, logistics, air-to-air and air-to-ground frequencies for CALFIRE and USFS. At the beginning of an incident I scan those banks and note any hits I get and then transfer them to a new bank for that particular incident. Sometimes frequencies are changed on a daily basis. This is especially true of VHF air frequencies. I've had to use the search capabilities of my radios to find them.

My suggestion is to look at nationwide frequencies in the RR database. You will see the National Incident Radio Support Cache and the National Interagency Fire Cache under federal frequencies. These do get some use at major fires.

Next look in California and look at CALFIRE and USFS under statewide listings. These are the most likely frequencies to check.

I am a District Emergency Coordinator in the Amateur Radio Emergency Service. As such I work with our county office of emergency services and some local fire agencies. Since we are part (nominally) of their ICS communications plan, I get copies of the frequency plans for major fires. There will be frequencies listed that are not in RR's database. I try to submit them when I can.

As you are in a CALFIRE and USFS region, I would suggest concentrating on those listings.

With modern frequency agile radios, crews can use thousands of frequencies. Mostly USFS uses the 16 standard tones. Of course, you don't absolutely need tones to monitor those frequencies.

I find the process of monitoring major incidents begins with local dispatch, command and tactical channels and then spreads to regional and statewide channels and then to national frequencies. It's a challenge.

 

[kd7ckq]

Those are great to keep in your scan list for fires. All those where used in the Museum Fire in Northern AZ. They are part of my fire season scan list.
edit add: They where used by crews for comms off of the normal Div channels. Used thru the duration of the fire.

 

[Paysonscanner]

After my husband died at a fairly early age from something that developed suddenly, I retired from nursing. I was in my early 60's and hit a wall. not able to do what I had done for 40 some years. My aging parents in Payson, AZ needed some in home care so I moved there. Anyway, just to let you know that my late husband and I were both hams, he had his general and I'm still a tech, but might be inspired to get my general as well. My dad is 92 and has been a general for eons now. One of my husband's talents was research. He could find documents that explained much about agency protocols, radio use, frequencies etc. He would print things out when he found them and put them in these very well organized, and some very thick notebooks. He also talked to a lot of people and kept detailed notes. He was a volunteer firefighter on our fire protection district's department and staffed engines sent to some large incidents via mutual aid. He talked to a lot of people when he was there and learned a lot. Recently, I finally got over my reluctance to look through those notebooks, look at all the websites he had bookmarked and figure out how to find information on my own. The grieving process for me has been slow.

I do know that the use of some frequencies is allowed without national approval (at NIFC) per the delegation of authority the Geographic Area Coordination Centers (GACC), but the bulk of frequencies used on large incidents are assigned by one group of folks at NIFC in Boise, Idaho. I'm pretty sure that the a number of VHF-AM frequencies are pre-approved annually by the FAA. That way NIFC has some frequencies up their sleeves to assign to incidents without FAA coordination on every one of them. When they run out of these frequencies they have to get permission from the FAA for each one they want to assign. My late hubby noted that on some incidents the person in charge of radio communications has access to what is assigned to federal agencies in the incident area and then get approval from NIFC for any that aren't assigned. Some seemingly odd freqs., normally assigned to other agencies, show up on incidents. They might not get used ever again and they might get used in the future, it is a mystery for us cause we don't and never will get to see the info the incident comm people and NIFC look at.

As each year passes it gets harder to find useful info.

 

[ladn]

As each year passes it gets harder to find useful info.

So true! A lot of this dates back to when (then) President Reagan exempted NTIA frequency information from FOI disclosure. Non-federal agencies took notice and were less forthcoming with frequency information requests (but still had to get FCC licenses). Plus, the sheer volume of frequencies used today is many times greater than 40+ years ago when I started scanning. Add in and multiply by the complexities of trunking protocols and a plethora of digital modes.

The proliferation and ease of use of streaming scanner feeds (and misuse by lookie loos) certainly hasn't helped things and has resulted in many agencies adopting across the board encryption.

 

[norcalscan]

Yes you found a list of 4 pretty common "crew nets" for hotshot crews and helitack crews. There are others, sanctioned or unsanctioned. When used as a crew net, it is never on the Incident's 205. Technically every member of the crew should be on the proper Incident-assigned Division frequency. But that never happens. A few members will keep ears on, or scan the Div freq, but the rest of the crew usually hangs on a quiet crew channel for logistical (and yes, tactical) traffic just between that particular crew, within the scope of that crew's duties/mission. And of course for travel, you'll get bathroom and meal break requests, votes for what restaurant to plunder (plunder is an understatement when a hungry shot crew arrives unexpectedly to a restaurant haha), or sports scores and whatnot (before smartphone days).

 

[Hooligan]

Some of the freqs mentioned in the original post are actively in-use as high-profile repeater outputs for non Interior or Agriculture agencies, so I do think that unless there was some incredibly poor, if-not reckless, freq-planning, they were assigned for specific areas. I would hate to have been a hotshot member relying on a certain freq for life-critical comms and have my mayday transmission not heard, because my antenna & I were horizontal under the emergency fire shelter blanket thing *and* because at the same time I was calling mayday in simplex-mode on the freq, the it was also being used as a high-profile repeater output 20 miles away by two bored, juvenile FBI agents (500' apart from each other...) discussing some homeboy's low-sagging pants while they were on a surveillance.

 

[Paysonscanner]

Some of the freqs mentioned in the original post are actively in-use as high-profile repeater outputs for non Interior or Agriculture agencies, so I do think that unless there was some incredibly poor, if-not reckless, freq-planning, they were assigned for specific areas. I would hate to have been a hotshot member relying on a certain freq for life-critical comms and have my mayday transmission not heard, because my antenna & I were horizontal under the emergency fire shelter blanket thing *and* because at the same time I was calling mayday in simplex-mode on the freq, the it was also being used as a high-profile repeater output 20 miles away by two bored, juvenile FBI agents (500' apart from each other...) discussing some homeboy's low-sagging pants while they were on a surveillance.

I've read that these 4 frequencies are federal govt. wide simplex itinerant frequencies. I read a memo where their use was for logistics only, at least in official policy. Often there is official policy and then reality. I know the older fed. itinerant freqs. of 163.1000 and 168.3500 are authorized for repeaters and I've come across a listing or two of such, but always in big cities. No one has an exclusive claim to all 6 of these freqs. The 163.1000 is used regularly as a "deck" or "ramp" frequency, used to coordinate helicopters on incident based heliports and at air tanker bases.

The 4 new freqs. are often used as tactical frequencies at national parks and on national forests, for those that don't have regional tacs or work nets. Most of the use of any of them is in some pretty remote, rural areas and handheld to handheld interference isn't common. For fire shelter use I think the division tac is used. I don't think my late husband every told me if a certain frequency was used for shelter to shelter communications when he took basic wildland firefighting and annual shelter training as a volunteer firefighter. Air Guard (168.6250) has evolved greatly in the last 50 or more years it has been around. It didn't used to be programmed into hand held radios, but now is increasingly being put into channel 16, especially on incidents. IN that way all people have to remember is to turn the dial to the last frequency and they have a designated mayday channel. When my dad was still working for the USFS in the 1960's it was just called "Air Net" used for anything having to do with aviation, air to air tac, air dispatch and air to ground. The National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service used to have radios, both mobiles and the large "pack" sets they called portables with only 2 or 3 channels in them. Air net was only put in the more expensive 4-6 channel radios that fire control officers (FCO), now called Fire Management Officers (FMO), were issued. The only tac channel for a long time was 168.200. or at least the only tac channel available in most mobile and portable radios. On large fires other tacs were used, but you had to pick up a BIFC (Boise Interagency Fire Center as NIFC was known as then) portable when arriving on a fire.

I'm no expert on this stuff, I have my dad to ask, my late husband's great printouts and notes and memory of what he told me. I'm here to learn so I'm more than open to what others have observed. I was a registered nurse in a small, rural, county hospital and used radio to communicate with EMT's and paramedics so wildland fire is not in my experience.

 

[norcalscan]

I'm no expert on this stuff, I have my dad to ask, my late husband's great printouts and notes and memory of what he told me.

Based on your recent posts, you have a pretty good and accurate understanding of how it all works, the big picture. Air Guard in channel 16 or whatever the last physical channel is on the knob for that group/zone is what a fire shelter deployment would most likely use. If they had time to prep and deploy, it'd be on the DIV or Air Ground freq, if it was hot and heavy it's where ever the adrenaline put them, hence the last physical stop of the radio channel's knob. Air Guard is monitored by every fire fighting aircraft and usually has a set minimum volume so it can't ever be muted, and due to the trained radio discipline by all users (the channel is used very minimally as a last resort and non-emergency traffic moved off channel) the Guard volume on the ASM platform is usually higher than all the other radios so any transmission is guaranteed to be heard. Being in the air over an incident is best chance of any simplex transmission on a large fire being heard, and air support is the fastest way of help for any shelter deployment or rapid egress. There is no shelter-to-shelter comms other than yelling and praying. Your hands are being used to hold down two corners of the shelter; one second of one inch gap between shelter and ground and your lungs can be seared, so you don't let go for PTT, if your radio even made it with you.

As for frequency coordination on an incident, the NIFC frequency coordinators (and similar in each GACC and state fire agencies) have a pretty good handle on what is available in each area, and it is extremely rare and very preventable to assign a tac on top of a nearby base transmitter. There is a new federal P25 trunked system going in CA and one site has a freq that is shared by a Forest's District net 115 miles away with mountains in between. Generally safe assignment on a normal day, except the Forest's aircraft get a helmet-full of P25 control channel at altitude or where RF paths make it through the mountains. The feds shut their transmitter down and will likely need to find a new freq or realign antenna patterns. Oops!