The Mount Pleasant National Scenic Area Wildfire (Amherst & Nelson Counties, VA) has now grown to 5,000+ acres as of Wednesday night, and is 0% contained. This is part of the Washington and Jefferson National Forests.
Most active frequencies so far are:
USFS Flight Following..........168.6500
USFS Region-5 TAC..............169.1875
NIFC ALL CALL..................163.1000
The second frequency, which you have labeled "USFS Region 5 TAC" is mislabeled. The George Washington and Jefferson National Forests are in the U.S. Forest Service's Southern Region, Region 8. My own records do not show this frequency, although my information for the eastern part of the country is pretty thin. Region 5 of the USFS, the Pacific Southwest Region, with minor exceptions, covers California. 169.1875 is not one of the three USFS Region 5 tacs. 166.5625 is shown on some channel plans as "Regions 8/9 Fire." Now the area these national forests are in are within Region 5 of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, however, 168.7375 was shown as "R5 Fire" on a channel plan for a USFWS radio I used last spring when I visited a National Wildlife Refuge that was doing a prescribed fire. Now being in the area covered by Region 5 of the USFWS does not really matter as the USFWS does not manage the national forests. This unless the Southern Geographical Area Coordination Center (GACC) (Atlanta) assigned a USFWS frequency for use on this fire. All wildland fire management/suppression agencies and departments at the federal, state and local levels are tied in with the GACC's and NIFC (National Interagency Fire Center - Boise, ID). As such all agencies pool their resources for mutual aid and radio frequencies are considered resources.
So I have a question, where did you get the information about this frequency? It is obviously not a USFS Region 5 tactical, is not listed on the limited info I have for Forest Service regions 8 & 9 and was not listed in early 2016 as a USFWS Region 5 frequency.
The "NIFC All Call" is actually one of 5 federal government wide nationwide intinent freqs. It is usually used for a "deck" channel for air tanker bases and a approach/departure-deck channel for large fire helibases. 163.1000 and 168.3500 have been federal government all call freqs for decades. In 2005, when the federal government went to narrowband 163.7125, 168.6125, 167.1375 and 173.6250 were added as new all federal agency, nationwide, itinerent freqs. The new four are used for "intra crew logistic freqs" by hotshot crews, which there maybe one or two of on some of the fires burning back east right now.
The member who questioned the tone for the Flight Following frequency. This is more accurately labeled "National Flight Following." When that assignment was made some years back 110.9 was required for both transmit and receive. After a number of years of requiring 110.9 on the transmit side of "National Air Guard," 168.6250, the tone (national tone 1) is now required on the receive side of all radios.
Those of you in the east don't see that many large fires and don't follow the developments in wildland fire radio communications like we do in the west where large fires happen a lot. There is a wiki article on the "National Incident Radio Support Cache." It was written by a guy who quit his membership here and I've recently done a few edits on it after getting my hands on some comm plans from various fires around the country. I'm a retired fire dog from the National Park Service.
Here is a link to the article
National Incident Radio Support Cache - The RadioReference Wiki
