2 questions about the MACS listing: I wonder why the 103.5 output tone was not listed for ANF & LPF, yet it was for CNF? Also, although the LAcoFD VHF command repeaters are listed V1-V5), there was no mention of the LARTCS system. Hasnt this been used for large-scale brush fires? (or does the system still exist?)
While they definitely do use the 103.5 on some other forests, the only "official" one is CNF. I'm not sure why they don't publish that the ANF, BDF, LPF use it.
Looking in the 2020 R5 Frequency Guide I see that the notation on all the forests for RX tones varies. For the Angeles there is a note that for the Forest Net and Admin Net, "simplex direct (Car to Car Only), Use Transmit Tone 8." There is no mention of the RX tone. The Cleveland has a note "Must use Tone 8 when using these channels to protect from interference from Mexico." The note pertains to repeater use of the Forest and Admin Nets. The listings for the Los Padres and San Bernardino does not mention anything about RX tones. Elsewhere in R5 there is no mention of RX tones on any forest. However, other people have mentioned output tones on forest nets for years. In my 40 years of living in California I've observed 103.5 on the output of the 4 Southern CA forest's radio systems, both on simplex and for repeaters. For the Sierra NF there is a unique output tone for each repeater, but the tones are not those of the standard 16, they are in the 71.9 to 91.5 range, which includes 8 total tones. The Inyo NF has the output tone matching the input tone. So does the Eldorado and Lake Tahoe Basin, according to my last time hearing those nets. Late Hubby and I traveled in CA extensively, but I see we did not make notes of the output tones on most USFS and BLM systems. I guess that is because note programming a RX tone wasn't our normal practice, except for Southern CA. For mutual aid purposes the RX tone is optional as communications can occur without it. However, before the NIFC system was set up for RX tones on both the command and tac nets, the interference from Mexico we heard once we left the Central Valley was pretty fierce!
Concerning the LARTCS system, we never heard it being used for a wildland fire. We were able to get hold of about a dozen incident comm plans and never saw this system mentioned. I think that is because it appears to be designed for the urban areas of L.A. County. Mt. Lee, Castro and Oat are electronic sites for L.A. County, Lee and Oat for L.A. City, as well as for other systems. They are typical sites for the LA basin, San Fernando Valley and west LA county. Systems for wildland fires are already available for federal, state and county incidents already, with the NIFC, Cal Fire and L.A. County (VHF) systems being very extensive. They don't have cross band repeater capability other than for linking repeaters and aviation freq, remote bases. Nearly all wildland responding agencies, no matter what system they use within their own agencies, also have VHF capabilities. In the case of the Angeles NF all the fire vehicles on the forest and dispatch have UHF LA County radios in them. At least the few that we saw over many years. When needed the NIFC system has a huge cache of VHF handhelds pre-programmed with that system. I should mention that we limited our trips to the urban portions of Southern CA to visit my Hubby's family and otherwise tried to avoid urban areas as much as possible, so our listening in those locations was not frequent.
