Thanks a million ExSmokey !, I always appreciate your detailed info...I been spending time at Hemet lake fishing with the scanner and wanted to really find out what is going on. Also there is a antenna tower right next to the lake and it looks like VHF but not 100% sure. I dont see any listings of it, however there is a link microwave pointed at the Toro peak / Santa Rosa Peak...any ideas ?
What is a dozer tender ?
What is a watershed ?
I don't think there is a Forest Service electronic site at Lake Hemet. I think it is at Pine Cove, above the town of Idlywild. However, I'm not sure that site is capable of receiving a good signal from Toro. The San Jacinto Ranger District has repeaters at Pine Cove, Tahquitz and Toro. If Toro is problematic for Pine Cove, Lake Hemet is in a location where it could receive all three. The San Jacinto District, which looks pretty gentle in the Lake Hemet area has some incredibly steep places. The Palm Springs tram crosses over the district before ending on state park land. There was a rather persistent fire on that side some years ago and hotshot crews had to rope up to control it. There was great TV news coverage of it.
Anyway, Toro and Santa Rosa, especially Toro has a ton of users on it, being the coverage from it is outstanding. It would not surprise me if the state or a phone company have a microwave link to it. I don't think that a microwave link from Toro is needed. If Pine Cove can pick it up then it would be routed on a microwave link back to Strawberry or Keller, whichever is the hub site for the forest.
I did forget one radio designator and that is "ranger." In the U.S. Forest Service that designator is reserved for the District Ranger only. There are others that have the word "ranger" in their titles, those being wilderness rangers and OHV (off highway vehicle) rangers. All other employees have different titles other than ranger. If someone called us ranger, we didn't get into the long discussion of titles, we just answered to it and helped them.
A dozer tender is a 3/4 or 1 ton truck with a utility bed/box. It usually has a 75-100 gallon diesel tank and in the utility boxes there are tools necessary for maintaining the dozer in the field. The dozer operator drives the dozer transport (designator: transport with the same number as the dozer) and the "swamper" drives the dozer tender. The swamper helps with the operation of the dozer including repairs, lube jobs (tracks need a lot of lubing) and walking ahead of the dozer to watch for problems such as large boulders hidden in brush, buried utility lines and other hazards and considerations for building line. I've been on two swamper assigments on fires and didn't like it. The noise, even with earplugs, the dust and the constant smell of diesel were too much for me.
Another designator I left out is "helitender." It is always owned by the same private contractor that provides the helicopter. It has the same number as the helicopter, which on the Inyo is "Helicopter 525" so Helitender 525 and Helitack 525 follow it around. The latter unit is always a Forest Service, BLM or National Park Service unit and contains all the equipment necessary for the Helitack crew to manage the helicopter or heliports on fires. The radio setup in helitack trucks is interesting given they have Victor frequency radios and sometimes UHF radios for local agencies. The helicopters almost have conventional coverage on every band, as well as HF in some helos used near the coast.
A watershed is the land that a creek, stream or river drains. The designator of "watershed" may be that of a hydrologist or soil scientist (dirtologist as I used to call them) or a watershed crew. These people help maintain watersheds. Drainage structures on roads need construction, reconstruction and maintenance which is usually delegated to the road maintenance crews (the "boys"). Watershed crews often work in sensitive watersheds such as meadows and riparian areas (surface and subsurface influence of a watercourse along its banks) repairing damage from timber harvest, grazing, improper trail location and off highway vehicles, this last one being one of the most damaging and pervasive activities in many locations on public lands. The crews build structures to slow the flow of surface water in damaged areas. They often build rock gabions (rocks encased in large wire mesh) across gullies that have enlarged in size due to one of the damaging activities mentioned above. The hydrologists and soil scientists often inspect road construction and plans for other facility construction and reconstruction to ensure that watershed health is considered. They also inspect the maintenance of all facilities such as roads; campgrounds and other developed recreation sites; and trails to ensure proper drainage structure and their maintenance is being done correctly. Fisheries (gillologists) and wildlife (critterologists) biologists work very closely with the watershed folks.The designation of National Forests in the late 1800's and early 1900's was often due to watershed concerns as such a designation was often the only method to protect watersheds.
Timber harvest levels prior to 1993, primarily due to road construction, caused more watershed damage and water quality issues than any other use. Grazing impacts have been a problem in existence for over a hundred years. Many areas should not be grazed at all and substantial reductions in permitted animals is needed in other areas. However, the biggest threat to watersheds, in fact, to the entire National Forest system, is now the uncontrolled use of motorized off highway vehicles. Politically these activities are highly charged and those participating in the discussion are ignorant of the effects of these uses on watersheds.
Recreation is a huge business on the Inyo National Forest. It has the most developed recreation site use in the entire National Forest system, the most vexing challenges in wilderness management and the highest campground occupancy rates for any National Forest. The Mammoth Ranger District had about 50% of the recreation use of the forest and that is where I was assigned. I was a field supervisor (forester) in frontcountry (non-wilderness lands) recreation management. I knew my place in the pecking order and always told the hydrologists and soil scientists that their jobs were far more important than mine.
The soil resource of any land trumps all other uses. Recreation, grazing, timber harvest, water diversion and storage and wildlife resources are all subordinate to soil. If you don't have healthy watersheds none of the other uses can occur. The existence of healthy meadows have effects for up to hundreds of miles downstream.
Case in point, the Los Angeles Department estimates that the existence of and the management of the Inyo National Forest prevents the need to build a 4 billion dollar water filtration plant (capital cost) and the several hundred dollar annual operation and maintenance cost that would result. 70% of the water provided by the LADWP originates on the Inyo National Forest from Lee Vining Creek in the north to Cottonwood Creek in the south. This water also generates a lot of power as it flows from the high country to the valleys and south along the aqueduct. The watersheds on the Kern Plateau are critical for the survival of the only native golden trout population in the world. For the public, watershed management is largely unknown and not understood.
Fishing and scanning are great activities to put together, aren't they? I take a ham radio and scanner cross country skiing, hiking and backpacking, road cycling and peak bagging (hiking/climbing mountains). The day I bagged White Mountain Peak (14,252') I keyed up a repeater on Mt. Charleston northwest of Las Vegas. I picked up the LASO and the San Bernardino, Los Padres and Angeles National Forests from the top of Mt. Whitney.
