I am actually interested in the Angeles National Forest as well. I've just started my hiking regiment in the San Bernardino's. It's just straight up the 215 freeway for me. I don't want retirement to cause my butt to swing wide if you know what I mean. LOL. When I was a younger man my boys and I would go camping and fishing all the time and we would go up to Chilao or Buckhorn. It's a shame to know the right now they're burned out.
Now little San Gorgonio and Forest Falls and that whole area that I've been hiking are in danger. This really makes me sad. This is why I was making sure to carry my portable scanner with me so that at least if I was on a hike, which is usually alone, I would know that something was up and I could get the heck out of the area. I found 173.0375 for the El Dorado fire but I don't know of any frequencies for the Bobcat fire. I can't hear any of the low-power radios at either fire.
I too have noticed that they're using simplex rather than going through the repeaters but I didn't want to press the issue because I'm new here. I have much to learn but as a retired cop that's been using radios for 30 years it's not like I'm new to them. We used simplex all the time. When we were on the station fall back for example we could be on Simplex in the station could still hear us but it wasn't being rebroadcasted for criminals with scanners to hear.
The statement was made that if they were on simplex I would never hear them but I know that not to be the case because I'm also a private pilot. I know that if I can't talk to the tower often times all I need to do is climb and then we can talk. I live just shy of 2100 feet off the 215 freeway and I most certainly can hear the different dispatch locations of the San Bernardino National Forest. I can hear them from the Angeles and the Cleveland as well.
John wrote that I would never hear them on simplex and my statement about being a pilot and climbing in order to talk to ATC, I was once involved in a pursuit that went from Los Angeles down to the Mexican border. I stood right next to the officer that called code 4 on his Rover and it was picked up in Los Angeles. I have done some hiking of the Hollywood Hills and I know that mountain Lee is only 1,700 feet.
My point is that if a low-level sites in Los Angeles can pick up an HT at the Mexican border and they could here our dispatch why would it be impossible for me to hear forest Rangers on simplex when they're up at 6000 and 7000 and 8000 feet?
My friend and I went down to San Diego I guess it's a week ago now and he used his HT and talked to a repeater on Strawberry Peak in the San Bernardino National Forest. I looked it up and Forest Service mobiles use 50 Watts. My friends HT is 5 Watts. If he could hear Strawberry Peak and Strawberry Peak could hear him 120 miles away, why shouldn't I be able to hear a 50 watt mobile when I'm at 2100 feet looking straight at the mountain from 30 miles away?
The San Bernardino National Forest face is known as the Front Country and that's what I can hear. I can't hear the ones in the back. I suggest that there's no difference between a cop using a Rover and a forest Ranger using his HT. The only difference is that I didn't win the lottery and don't have a multimillion-dollar radio system to play with. LOL.
You gentlemen seem really great and I appreciate it. If I ask a stupid question please don't laugh too loudly.
An LAPD handheld being picked up by the LAPD repeater system in L.A.? There is something else involved there or the LAPD has a repeater site on Santiago Peak, but that is unlikely and Santiago Peak did not do too well on my ham handheld just out to the west of the SD harbor on my 70cm (440 MHz) handheld. Handhelds are usually 5 watts lest they use up one batter before shifts end. The LAPD has high level sites around L.A. for both transmit and receive and a system of low level receiver sites tied into those repeaters. The best mobile signal from anyone of those sites is used to transmit the signal on the high level repeaters. Strawberry is far enough west in the San Bernardino Mountains to find that nice little gap in mountainous terrain just northeast of Fallbrook. Try having someone work Onyx and see if the results are similar, especially on the ham 70cm band, which will behave more like the UHF frequencies the LAPD uses. The face of the San Bernardino Mtns, is in the Frontcountry Ranger District, a consolidation of the old Lytle Creek (t might have had a different name, but the ranger district office was and is there)and San Gorgonio (Mill Creek) Ranger Districts. The Big Bear District was also combined with the Arrowhead Ranger District to form the Mountaintop Ranger District.
The LAPD uses repeaters on almost all of its frequencies, especially the dispatch channels for each division. That is why when I'm in the LAX area and can hear their repeaters on Lukens I hear the cars loud and clear. That repeater using the assistance of those satellite receiver sites I mentioned. I also hear the Bureau tacticals and citywide tacticals on repeaters as well. The LAPD does use simplex and I hear that when I'm down there as well. Bring up the LAPD on the Radio Reference database page for LA County. This time click onto the input frequency item just below the map. Choose the second option of "shown" rather than the default of "hidden." Take a look at all those frequencies with repeater input channels. Even the fallback/talk around channels use repeaters, but I hear everyone on incidents sometimes agreeing to go simplex, especially when a helo is involved.
As for understanding radio, being a user doesn't give a person much knowledge about how they actually work. I had coworkers in the Forest Service that knew nearly nothing, could not explain how tones and repeaters worked or even distinguish repeater traffic from simplex traffic. None of them worked in fire management and none in wilderness management. My first supervisor on the Inyo National Forest did not know Tone 3 from channel 3 and had been on the forest for 8 years prior to me. Miracle on miracle the radio in her pickup was always set on Tone 3, so when she dialed in Channel 2 she was able to work the Tone 2 repeater on it all the time. Then someone would call her and say Tone 3 and she would change to Channel 3, which was NIFC Tac 2 and tell me that she can't every hear anyone of the Glass Mountain repeater, which is accessed by Tone 3, but on channel 2. It was my first day on the job and she was giving me the district tour so I kept my mouth shut. I worked on the National Forest just north of the Inyo and knew more about the Inyo's radio system than she did. I used it time to time so I needed to. I should have sneaked into her truck and changed the external tone switch to Tone 6, which selected the Olancha Peak repeater on Channel 2 (Forest Net Repeat) located 100 miles to the south and she would no one would hear her, but that would not be like me.
Aircraft can pick up traffic at long distances, that is why aviation radios use fairly low power or the aviation band would be chaos. I've picked up fire department comms when I put my volunteer fire department pager in the window of a commercial airliner, up until the admonishment I received from a flight attendant.
There is a huge difference between an LAPD Rover and the radios used by Forest Service employees. The ROVER system uses satellite receiver sites that pick the best signal by a computer voting system. Forest Service systems do not, they rely on far more repeater sites than the LAPD. This is because within the city of L.A. the terrain is more or less gentle and most national forests are not, with some notable exceptions like the National Grasslands and the flat national forests in northern Arizona like where I started my USFS career. Tactical traffic is always simplex and command traffic is nearly always on repeaters. Whether mobile units communicate simplex to dispatch through remote bases or use repeaters depends on an individual forest's radio system and terrain. Up here on the Inyo National Forest there is one remote base for each system, the north forest net, the south forest net and the service net. So a total of three, plus the remote base on Air Guard and National Flight Following.
I'm sorry this is not in the same order as your post. The issue of hearing a repeater and actually being able to transmit clearly through that repeater is vastly different. I was able to hear repeaters from Bridgeport, California all the way from Mt Hoffman in Yosemite National Park to CDF repeaters south of Monterey. I could not bring up a signal on any of them, as I had a handheld radio from work I would program the frequencies in. There was an interesting knife edge signal path at the south end of the Bridgeport Valley combined with a large talus slope on a high mountain peak that facilitated it. I even tried the 50 watt base station in the ranger station on some a couple of the frequencies without success.
Keep on answering questions, don't make assumptions and don't stop learning. Above all, have fun!