30 Aug 2020 - motorcycle down on Angeles Forest Highway

[zerg901]

Aug 30 was listening to the Angeles National Forest feed on Broadcastify. The feed just monitors 1 channel apparently. The 1 channel is ANF "Forest Net" The channel is pretty quiet. There might be 1 dispatch every couple of hours. And misc admin messages every 15 minutes.

Around 107 PM EDT a call went out for a motorcycle down on Angeles Forest Highway. Several ANF units responded as well as Los Angeles County Fire units plus Sheriff Air 5 plus probably CHP and maybe Sheriff SAR. At 1311 the ANF dispatcher reported that LA County FD was sending Eng 282 + Squad 19 + Patrol 82. "V6 Direct" was mentioned at that time. (Pretty sure that "V6 Direct" is 1 of the LA County FD VHF simplex channels.)

At 1314 LA County FD Copter 16 came up on Forest Net and reported they had a ETA of 5 minutes. Copter 16 did some preliminary air to ground messages with ANF Eng 34 and the ANF Dispatcher on Forest Net.

A couple of ANF units called off at the scene and reported that they were switching to "Tac 2". (One of them was Eng 34 who was going to land Copter 16 on Tac 2)

Approx 1315 - the ANF Dispatcher told someone to switch over to "Admin Net".

At 1316 hour - Eng 32 was reporting 1 injured party and then his radio traffic got clobbered by someone. Sounded like someone was on the repeater input and blowing Eng 32 off the air. (Eng 32 might have been on a portable radio)

1335 hour - Eng 34 reports to the ANF dispatcher that "Air 5" is at the scene.

Bottom line - "Tac 2" was probably "NIFC Tac 2"

More Bottom line - air to ground comms might have been on V6 Direct or Tac 2 or 154.40 or CalCord (156.075) or the USFS a/g channel. Whatever channel was used - it didnt come thru the Broadcastify feed. (I did not hear any typical LZ comms - 'we are off to right' - 'LZ is secure' - 'no wires' - etc)

Maybe I should pull the tape and put it on the Wayback machine

 

[zerg901]

202008301157 340505 25757 : broadcastify : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

here is the radio recording at the WayBack machine

 

[es93546]

202008301157 340505 25757 : broadcastify : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

here is the radio recording at the WayBack machine

A motorcycle down call on the Angeles Crest Highway!!?? On Sunday you tell me!! How incredibly unusual! NOT! I've visited family in southern California for a few decades, sometimes for a long enough period to listen to the scanner all day long on Sunday. When I listened the average of these on Sundays was about 3-4. Some days they happened about once an hour. This also happens with cars. Another hotspot for this is in the Santa Monica Mountains. I don't recall which road, I haven't lived there since 1973.

L.A. County Fire has, I think, 19 "V Channels" as well as a VHF frequency labeled "LAC RIC" (Rapid Intervention Crew), which is a contingency operation for "incidents within an incident. "LAC RIC" is 154.3925 with a digital tone (D152) on both sides. "V6 direct" is 153.8300, Tone 14 (151.4) RX and TX. I also thought I heard V13 mentioned, which is 159.0900 with Tone 14 again. The first 5 "V" channels are set up for repeaters all with T14 RX/TX.

I worked in the Forest Service's Intermountain Region, R4 for about 7 years. I was on a ranger district that had a small portion of California in the Sierra Nevada. R4 was pretty weak at the time. I worked closely with the Inyo NF and Yosemite NP. I attended a region wide recreation management conference/training in my 6th year working there. Someone got up and gave a presentation of recreation management on the Angeles. Law enforcement officers with full motorcycle motocross specially marked uniforms on, complete with handgun, cuffs, OC spray; motorcycle down and vehicle over the side incidents, USFS LEO's making arrests in San Gabriel Canyon and USFS engines providing EMT's at traffic accidents and responding off forest for mutual aid in wildland fuels.

The room was shocked for a bit. Then someone got up and said that what they saw "is not the Forest Service's role." They thought Region 5 had a huge problem for letting things get this way. I bit my tongue for awhile and then stood up. I explained that National Forests in California, especially the 4 southern CA forests have to do some things differently due to reality. I told them they had no idea what it is like there. I encouraged them to travel to southern CA and drive the Angeles Crest Highway on a Sunday, or up San Gabriel Canyon on a weekend. Do this before passing judgement I said.

Early in my career I had a notion to transfer there from Arizona. My first wife nixed the idea so I took a different direction in my career. The position was as a patrol at the old Buckhorn Station (patrol quarters only). I had a supervisor that used to work a patrol unit on that forest. He was going to recommend me and I had a good chance. I was an action junky trying to get a better fix.

EDIT: and zerg, thanks for the recording. It put me into a reminiscing mode. I have a couple of long distance friends who worked there for some time.