VCFD crew net is on 168.350 (MO only) CSQ. The reason I’m posting this here is it isn’t in the RRDB. I came across it eons ago during a frequency search. I’m sure there are many who have wanted to follow hand crews, dozers, and such but were unable.
I tried getting this added to the DB, but it was rejected as follows: “Frequency is a National Interagency Fire Center common and available for interagency use. Freq in Db already” of which I was well aware. There should be a policy allowing instances such as this where national frequencies are used on a local level to be entered in the local DB, otherwise how is one to know.
What prompted me to do this now was a brush response late this afternoon in Oxnard
Are you sure that Ventura County Fire Department fire crews are using this as a "crew net." This is a widely used federal frequency, one of 6 "federal itinerant mobile/portable only" frequencies. It is widely used at National Parks and National Forests as a work channel (on projects) and as a tac channel. Some state and local agencies are allowed to have it in their radios, per a memorandum of agreement/mutual aid agreement for interfacing with federal agencies. I have never heard of this frequency being authorized for day to day use by a state or local agency. That is why I ask if you know that VCFD crews are using it. I don't have the latest Los Padres NF/Ventura County agreement in my collection, only older ones. If they have allowed its use for the VCFD in this manner I would be surprised. If they haven't been authorized, use by that department's crews is beyond what they should be doing. I can imagine some crews thinking they can use a channel and no one will ever know, which isn't true as you have proved. A lot of people with radios don't really know how they work and the problems they can cause. They have all been given instructions on this stuff, but many tend to ignore some of it at times.
However, if these crews are on an interagency response involving a federal agency then that is OK. Have you heard and noted the radio identifiers for these crews? When you heard them were they working a mutual aid incident?
One problem the RRDB has is they don't want to list frequencies in a redundant manner. This is for good reason, given the way that the average person programs a radio, they don't want 168.3500 or similar in their radio many times over. For example, this might be channel 15 on a Los Padres National Forest radio. However, it might be channel 7 in an Angeles NF radio and channel 9 in a Sequoia NF radio. The RRDB admins don't want to show the entire channel lineup for each national forest when there is a common channel between them on that list. So they just have the frequencies unique to that national forest, national park, BLM district/field office in the listings. They say that individual agency/units channel plans can be listed in the RR wiki. However, the wiki is hard to navigate and a lot of members don't think to go there, in spite of the nice little tab for it on each page. There is a nice, but not recently updated, wiki listing for each national forest and park on the wiki. When researching how to program a scanner, you have to go a little deeper than just the database page and go a little further than bringing up the database page for importing frequencies for the computer to program it. My late Hubby and my Dad always programmed the channel lineup of each NP, NF or BLM district so that they could have the channel numbers display on the scanner. That way, when we were in, for example, Yosemite NP, if they heard switch to channel 11 on a repeater channel, they could punch manual through the frequencies and quickly find two or more units talking on a tac frequency. They had to program their scanners differently than having the RRDB spoon feed it to them for this to work. The feds have assigned 4 narrowband frequencies for "crew net" use and 168.3500 is not one of them. I think the 4 are in the "Nationwide Frequency" section of the database. Keep in mind you might hear the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on 168.3500, or the VA, or a bunch of alphabet soup federal agencies. None of them have exclusive rights to its use or the other 5 federal wide itinerants.
My late Hubby had some sources due to his employment with a county and as a volunteer firefighter for a small county department. He often got to see the comm manuals of agencies so he knew the channel lineups. Since Sequoia-Kings and Yosemite NP's were near us, he programmed in the lineup of each park, but put them in different banks so he would not have freqs like 168.3500 pop up in the Yosemite channel plan while in Sequoia-Kings. There isn't enough room to put it in once and label it "YNP CH 11 & SEKI CH 8" so he listed it twice and made sure he didn't listen to one while in the other.
Sorry to be so lengthy hear, I'm a woman who tends to talk a lot!