K7MFC Field Observations - Tonto NF 168.35 MHz

[K7MFC]

Tonto National Forest lifted all fire restrictions on Friday morning, so me and a buddy threw the camping gear and some radios in my truck and headed up the Four Peaks Road. At the saddle, we encountered a locked gate. Some firefighters in a UTV arrived to unlock it for the public, but some idiot had apparently shot at the padlock attempting to open it themselves and damaged it so that the combination would not work. I noticed that one of the firefighters working on the gate was radioing for some tools, so I went to my truck scanner and observed frequency 168.35 MHz and tone 123.0 Hz in use on the his handheld:

I did not see any entries for USFS using 168.35 MHz in the RadioReference database. This was the first time in a long time I was able to pick up a close call hit on the scanner from the USFS.

 

[milcom_chaser]

Tonto National Forest lifted all fire restrictions on Friday morning, so me and a buddy threw the camping gear and some radios in my truck and headed up the Four Peaks Road. At the saddle, we encountered a locked gate. Some firefighters in a UTV arrived to unlock it for the public, but some idiot had apparently shot at the padlock attempting to open it themselves and damaged it so that the combination would not work. I noticed that one of the firefighters working on the gate was radioing for some tools, so I went to my truck scanner and observed frequency 168.35 MHz and tone 123.0 Hz in use on the his handheld:

I did not see any entries for USFS using 168.35 MHz in the RadioReference database. This was the first time in a long time I was able to pick up a close call hit on the scanner from the USFS.

Hey Matt, what you tagged with close call is a standardized Federal common channel called FEDTRVL
It's used for units while traveling. The other one is called FEDCOM1 on 163.1 TX/RX.

 

[K7MFC]

Thanks for this info, milcom_chaser. I recently came across the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management's Wildland Fire Radio Communications Guide and the FEDTRVL and FEDCOM1 are listed in there. I will have to include these in my scanner programming.

 

[cellphone]

I have in my notes that 168.350 might be referred to as "Channel 7" by Tonto NF.