I have noticed on the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit the Forest Net is almost exclusively used for "routine" radio traffic. This is the area in which I work and interact with Forest Service employees from law enforcement to recreation and prevention units. They all use the Forest Net. The Admin Net appears to be more of a "TAC" or secondary channel. And the Law Enforcement channel is used as a "talk-around" channel as 99% of law enforcement radio traffic is done on the Forest Net.
I have heard some radio traffic on the Admin Net lately related to actual fires, maybe with the increase of the number of fires lately, but it appears that the dispatch and routine radio traffic continues on the Forest Net for Lake Tahoe. Most agencies and people (including myself) when contacting Camino for some request, use the Forest Net and all we do is pick a repeater (specific tone) to use when calling them. Just interesting how different National Forests, with their different terrains and responsibilities and unique features all have different ways of communicating in the field.
When forests began installing a second net and called it admin it was used as a secondary repeater net that was often used as a large incident command net, for units to switch over to when a conversation would involve an extended amount of time or when forest net was tied up for fires and units from all the other functions needed a net free of fire traffic. After a while some forests separated fire and law enforcement traffic from that of all the other functions, who were moved to admin net. Now it tends to be a mixed bag. National Forests are relatively autonomous and Forest Supervisors are at about the level colonels are in the military. Sometimes this leads to interesting differences between forests. Bigger differences exist when comparing the 9 regions in the agency. I worked in 3 regions and the differences between the 3 were interesting.
Up to about 3-4 years ago each region developed their own designs for apparatus and there weren't nationwide standards for building the various engine types, such the ubiquitous Type III engine in California. This proved to be inefficient and expensive. Some contractors built engines from more than one region with parts and tooling varying. The Washington Office finally stepped in and made a top down decision to standardize one design per engine type. This also helps when people transfer from one region to another and don't need to adapt to another version of the same type engine.
The Incident Command System was developed in California and Region 5 of the USFS started implementing it in 1981 or 1982. A due date for all Forest Service regions to start using it was set for the 1986 fire season or January 1st, I don't recall which. Most regions implemented ICS ahead of the due date. The Northern Region, Region 1 (northern Idaho, Montana and North Dakota) refused to implement it until the due date. The rumor was they said they would not implement something from California until forced.
Radio procedures can vary as well, with some forests in Region 1 and Region 4 (the Intermountain Region of southern Idaho, Utah, Nevada and the Bridger Teton National Forest in Wyoming) having people use their last names as identifiers. Yes, some forests don't use standard radio identifiers such as Chief, Division, Battalion, and functional names such as Recreation, Resources, Wilderness etc. Instead they all use last names. Can you imagine responding to a mutual aid incident from, for example, the Plumas National Forest, to a fire in the SRA and making this call, "Cal Fire Battalion 2115, Forest Service Smith on your local net Tone 7." Everyone would be scratching their heads wondering who Smith is, an FMO, a Batt Chief, or ?. But that is what they do and they don't want to change. They are required to designate apparatus with a nationwide standard, but individuals, fire and other functions, use their last names. I remember working in R4 when the Toiyabe NF stared requiring the use of designators instead of their last names. When the thi direction came down you would think everyone had been hit with a 2 x 4, they were emotionally attached to using their last names. From day 1 on that forest I used a number after asking for a identifier list. They hunted around and found one, but I was told to use my last name, which I refused to do.
The Forest Service tries to allow Regions and National Forests to make their own decisions and don't want to prescribe how to do everything. This is mixed bag, sometimes good and sometimes bad.
