New Wildland Dispatch Center

[Paysonscanner]

I became aware of this in last month or so. The Six Rivers NF, Redwood NP, the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge and the Hoopa Reservation pulled out of the Fortuna ECC. They have their own dispatch center now, which is located at the Six Rivers NF forest supervisor's office in Eureka. I guess we don't have many members who live up in Humboldt and Del Norte Counties. No one has posted info on this to this point. Apparently, the fire management functions of the forest and the park have been merged. I wonder if this is true for the NWR as well.

This is the first new dispatch center in California in a very long time. Most changes have been for consolidation, not new centers. The last I remember, while living in California, was over 20 years ago. The Los Padres NF had moved in to co locate with Cal Fire. Late Hubby and I visited the center then. After a while the Los Padres established its own again, but instead of it being in the Los Padres NF supervisor's office it was moved to Santa Maria. That might be where we visited. Cal Fire is now in the SLO County FD HQ in the city of SLO.

I wonder if they are identifying as "Eureka," "North Coast" or "Six Rivers?"

 

[Kingscup]

Cal Fire is now in the SLO County FD HQ in the city of SLO.

The County of San Luis Obispo has contracted with CAL FIRE for fire protection since 1930 so this is not a new arrangement. I am not sure if you were inferring that. I don't know if the current location started in 1930 but I believe SLU HQ has been there since at least the 1950s.

 

[Paysonscanner]

The County of San Luis Obispo has contracted with CAL FIRE for fire protection since 1930 so this is not a new arrangement. I am not sure if you were inferring that. I don't know if the current location started in 1930 but I believe SLU HQ has been there since at least the 1950s.

I'm real fuzzy on this, but I though we visited the co located LPF-CDF dispatch center in Santa Margarita or Santa Maria. I didn't think we were in the City of San Luis Obispo. I could very well be wrong on this. All I know is that they haven't been co located in about 15 years of more. Again, this is all my recollection, I don't have anything written to refer to.

 

[Paysonscanner]

I just got hold of a Cal Fire 2020 frequency load that shows this new dispatch center using an identifier of "North Coast."

It would be nice if someone could confirm by listening to the Redwood NP or Six Rivers NF nets.

 

[Kingscup]

I'm real fuzzy on this, but I though we visited the co located LPF-CDF dispatch center in Santa Margarita or Santa Maria. I didn't think we were in the City of San Luis Obispo. I could very well be wrong on this. All I know is that they haven't been co located in about 15 years of more. Again, this is all my recollection, I don't have anything written to refer to.

Looks like I found the answer related to to the SLU/LPF dispatch center. It is an article from 2003. It looks like you were right on the LPF. I didn’t have a problem with what you said as whole but just that one sentence I quoted previously. CAL FIRE has been the SLOCoFD since 1930 and is not a new arrangement.

LPF Dispatch Center

 

[Paysonscanner]

Looks like I found the answer related to to the SLU/LPF dispatch center. It is an article from 2003. It looks like you were right on the LPF. I didn’t have a problem with what you said as whole but just that one sentence I quoted previously. CAL FIRE has been the SLOCoFD since 1930 and is not a new arrangement.

LPF Dispatch Center

Thanks for this information! I spent on semester at Cal Poly-SLO back in the 1970's. Hubby and I visited the LPF dispatch sometime in the early 90's when it was near the front entrance to the Forest Supervisor's Office. I remember the front entrance being a sort of atrium, with a lot of plants. The dispatch office entrance was off that atrium, before reaching the front office of the SO. We met a radio tech, who was a ham and he took us all over the dispatch center, the radio shop and even showed us the LPF's small delivery truck sized mobile comm unit. Then sometime just after 2000 we visited the CDF-SLU/LPF co-located dispatch. I don't think it was in SLO itself, but next to some airport. I don't know what year the note came from, but Hubby wrote "the LPF doesn't use microwave or UHF backbone to control all its repeaters, they have a 400 meg link from Santa Ynez to dispatch. All repeaters, including Monterey district work through S. Ynez line of sight. WHODA THUNK!!

I just found two recent references that the LPF Comm Center never moved to Vandenberg. It is located at the Santa Maria airtanker base. I think this is where Hubby and I visited the co-located CDF/LPF center.

BUT, this thread is about the North Coast dispatch center. I would love to hear from those in redwood country about why these agencies pulled out of Fortuna.

 

[norcalscan]

Just confirmed. "North Coast" for the SRF.

 

[Paysonscanner]

Just confirmed. "North Coast" for the SRF.

Thanks for the confirmation! It was listed that way in some paperwork I found. Sometimes the formal name for the dispatch area is not used on the air. Example, the Federal Interagency Dispatch Center does not answer to "Federal," but answers to its location "San Bernardino." Another is the Central California Dispatch Center, it does not answer to "Central California," it is coined as "Porterville," where the Sequoia NF has its Forest Supervisor's Office.

I looked up the address and the dispatch center is in the Forest Supervisor's Office in Eureka. Looks like they had a new building put up since late Hubby and I visited there sometime in the late 80's If I remember right it is a little west of the rest of town, next to the west side or east side of U.S. 101. It was right downtown when we visited. The Fortuna ECC would not let us in, so we just visited the reception area at the S.O.

 

[silverspy]

I wanted to mention something about North Coast Dispatch and the Six Rivers NF. Sometimes when they read the morning report, Jobs Peak on the Humboldt-Toiyabe is being keyed up, as the Six Rivers Admin Net and Humboldt-Toiyabe Forest Net
have the same input. The path for this would be pretty long, however I guess there must be ducting going on,

 

[norcalscan]

I wanted to mention something about North Coast Dispatch and the Six Rivers NF. Sometimes when they read the morning report, Jobs Peak on the Humboldt-Toiyabe is being keyed up, as the Six Rivers Admin Net and Humboldt-Toiyabe Forest Net
have the same input. The path for this would be pretty long, however I guess there must be ducting going on,

What tone lights up Jobs Peak? I'd love to cross that with the corresponding tone on SRF and check that path out. Payson, any of your guides show the HTF tones? I love finding those hidden gems of paths (some with engineered RF paths taking advantage, others inadvertent finds after the fact...) with some of the topography of CA.

 

[silverspy]

Tone 5 146.2

 

[norcalscan]

Tone 5 146.2

So I believe the bulk of SRF is dispatched via remote base on Horse Mtn, here on google maps. That has line of sight to Jobs Peak, 248miles away.

 

[silverspy]

That’s a long path.

 

[rsmith7799]

I just got hold of a Cal Fire 2020 frequency load that shows this new dispatch center using an identifier of "North Coast."

It would be nice if someone could confirm by listening to the Redwood NP or Six Rivers NF nets.

North Coast is the area above Morro Bay. Cambria, San Simeon. So basically all the coastal cities up to the Monterey Co. line.

 

[N5XPM]

That path study is very interesting. Basically the magnitude of the altitude of the ISS, but with more atmosphere for signal attenuation.

 

[norcalscan]

That path study is very interesting. Basically the magnitude of the altitude of the ISS, but with more atmosphere for signal attenuation.

Typically the ducting I'm familiar with occurs in a sort of north-south fashion along the valley floor, usually up against the foothills. Sometimes a similar duct occurs up the northern valley from the delta, depending marine influence. This can bring Santa Clara Sheriff up into Tehama County. It'd be interesting to see if this east-west is common, or an alignment of stars and planets.

I've done a lot of peak to peak work in NorCal, checking out ranges and paths through terrain, but nothing similar to this path. It is fun to get on some of the 6500ft+ peaks along the western edge of northern sac valley, and shoot all the way down the valley into Fresno area. Low level fire aircraft in the Merced/Stockton area often hit 6000ft+ repeaters near Mt. Lassen.

 

[Paysonscanner]

What tone lights up Jobs Peak? I'd love to cross that with the corresponding tone on SRF and check that path out. Payson, any of your guides show the HTF tones? I love finding those hidden gems of paths (some with engineered RF paths taking advantage, others inadvertent finds after the fact...) with some of the topography of CA.

This Six Rivers - Humboldt-Toiyabe path is fascinating! There used to be some interference between the Shasta T and the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit, but that is a much shorter path. I have the tones for each forest:

Six Rivers NF

Forest Net 172.3750/164.1750
Admin Net 170.4750/165.7500
Service Net 169.9500/164.7875

1 Monkey Ridge
2 Unused
3 Lone Pine Ridge
4 Ship Mtn. *
5 Orleans Mtn. *
6 Horse Ridge *
7 Ukonom Mtn.
8 Eight Mile
9 Kettenpom
10 Unused
11 Unused
12 Gordon Mtn.
13 Horse Mtn. *
14 Picket Peak

* Service Net Repeater, all others have both Forest and Admin Nets.

Ranger District Number/Unit Identifiers:

1 Smith River NRA/Gasquet RD (pronounced "gas key")
2 Orleans RD
3 Lower Trinity RD
4 Mad River
5 Redwood NP Units
9500 Hoopa BIA

Humboldt-Toiyabe NF

Carson #D1, Austin #D3 and Tonopah #D4 RD's Net 173.7750/165.7500

Carson RD

1 Slide Mtn.
2 Peavine
3 Hawkins
4 Rawe Peak (AKA Pinenut - NDF)
5 Jobs Peak

Austin and Tonopah RD's

1 Mahogany
2 Bald
3 Austin Mtn.
4 Mt. Brock
5 Not Used
6 Bunkerhill
7 Jefferson

Carson RD #D1 Leviathan Repeater (Markleeville Lightning Net) and Spring Mtns. National Recreation Area #D5 Net

172.2750/164.5000

2 Potosi D5
5 Angel Peak D5
6 Mt. Charleston D5
8 Leviathan D1

Bridgeport #D2 and Santa Rosa #D10 (Humboldt NF portion) RD Net

170.5250/164.1875

1 Sweetwater D2/Buckskin D10
2 Masonic (NE of Bridgeport, microwave linked remote base also) D2
3 Not used
4 Not used
5 Lobdell (AKA Pine Grove) D2
6 Mean Peak D2
7 Cory Peak D2

Remainder of the HTF, Districts 6-9, all in eastern Nevada and this is a California thread. I won't list here.

169.9000/164.1375

When the Toiyabe was entirely on 169.8750/170.4750 and the Toiyabe didn't use tones to select repeaters (they tried to separate repeaters by distance and topography, which did not work well) 169.8750 was the input for the San Bernardino NF and they had tone selection for all their repeaters. Before CTCSS they probably used burst tone selection. Anyway, the first time late Hubby and I hiked up to the summit of Mt. Charleston (Spring Mtn. NRA - old Las Vegas RD) we were picking up the repeater input of mobile units using repeaters down on the San Bernardino. Some on the north side of the mountains and a couple on the south face of the mountains. This was on a Bendix-King we owned in the mid 1980's. We were trying to listen to the Toiyabe and backpacked south of Charleston on the main ridge. I think the Toiyabe would have interfered with the BDF nearly constantly if they put a tone on their output that happened to be the same input tone for a BDF repeater. These are the things the USFS and NTIA have to work out, but in this case and the current one, it involves two regions, R4 & R5. The regions tend to be fairly autonomous, with probably 70% - 80% of employees working their entire careers in one region, depending on grade level and education.

 

[Paysonscanner]

Another interesting aspect of the Humboldt-Toiyabe is the number of dispatch centers the forest uses, All five of the BLM's dispatch centers in Nevada. Daddy and I can't think of another National Forest using more than 2 and those are few in number. The HTF uses Elko, Winnemucca, Carson City, Ely and Las Vegas. As late Hubby and I heard they have their own microwave linking system, which is tied into the State of Nevada microwave system and I think the entire forest can be worked from any one of the 5 centers. We had some great backpacking trips on the HTF, especially in central and northern NV that were pretty remote.

 

[Paysonscanner]

North Coast is the area above Morro Bay. Cambria, San Simeon. So basically all the coastal cities up to the Monterey Co. line.

When I lived in California the Central Coast was considered from San Luis Obispo County all the way up to Monterey or Santa Cruz. The northern coast started north of Marin County to Oregon. I guess it depends on who you are talking to. The northern coast of Humboldt and Del Norte Counties was usually called the "Redwood Country," thus the "Redwood Coast" or the "Northern Redwood Coast." But we didn't live up there so I'm not an expert.

 

[KK6ZTE]

North Coast is the area above Morro Bay. Cambria, San Simeon. So basically all the coastal cities up to the Monterey Co. line.

California encompasses more than just our county Rick