Good morning, so I talked with the LP Comm. Tech (Patrick Marty) after he posted the 217a for the Forest. He doesn't have the RX tones because he says they are already in the radio. That made no sense to me. So I rewrote the 217a for Patrick with the RX tones. The reason I did that was because if you are coming in on Mutual Aid, you won't be able hear any of the RX transmissions, since most Departments run with tones on both sides.
I will reach out to my LA County boys and get an answer on the LARTCS protocols just to clear it all up.
Good morning to you also! I don't know what a 217a is, can you explain?
My understanding that if there isn't a RX tone in the radio, you hear everything, regardless of the tone. That is how my late Hubby's volunteer fire department Bendix-King radio worked. I still have the BK radio we owned and we listened to all the forests, parks and BLM nets without a RX tone programmed into them. On national forests where the repeater input tone is transmitted on the output also, the mobiles and handhelds in the field don't have individual channels for each repeater, along with that repeater's output tone programmed, the channel has no tone for RX on the forest and admin repeater net access channels. The direct forest/admin channels (usually 1 and 3) don't have RX or TX tones on them either, except in SOCAL. The radio receives everything TXed on those frequencies.
We took Hubby's FD handheld to SOCAL once and heard Angeles, San Bernardino and Cleveland traffic with Mexican interference as well. We also heard traffic on those nets, plus the NIFC nets getting this interference. Someone on these nets was complaining that, and this is a quote, not what I said, "boy, the Julios are real strong tonight, I couldn't copy you." This back about 20-30 years ago. I think that is why NIFC is now assigning a RX tone for all command and tactical frequencies used when a NIFC system is setup on a fire. I saw that somewhere in my sweetie's notebooks. It was also to reduce interference from NIFC systems set up on other fires in the area. Since then we always programmed 103.5 into our SOCAL scanner, ham handhelds and the BK's we brought with us, no more Mexico traffic.
It would seem like any mutual aid radios brought into an area without RX tones will be on CSQ and will hear everything on the freq. A RX tone is not mandatory, even on the radios the home unit has. Am I missing something here? The document we are discussing here doesn't have the Inyo's, the Sierra's, the Eldorado's RX tones shown in them, it would seem like that is a good indicator that my understanding is correct.