Yosemite National Park Added to Database - Take a Look

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hotdjdave

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kma371

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First off, thanks to whoever submitted the information.

Second, it would be helpful to know what some of the Descriptions mean or what the actual frequency use is?

For example, under the fire section, I'm gonna assume that "Crane" "Signal" "Hoffman" are repeater sites? If not, could someone help us out?

Also, under East NPS ops, "MAM PD" is what exactly? A police department i assume?
And under the same section, "INF WAR" "INF JUN" "INF MAM" is what? "INF" I guess it Inyo National Forest?

There is 136.075 listed as FM. Are these supposed to be AM?

What I'm getting at is, these descriptions are very cryptic. Could someone update them so it makes more sense?
 

WayneH

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I modified some of the descriptions. With the LE Zone I had simplifed the various channels that were specific to a repeater using the repeater's name (and would be more obvious if they had tones).

In NorCal I've seen many NF repeaters pass the input tone as the output tone so I wish we had more accurate data as to how the NP or Forest Net ran their repeaters. This is why in CDF, etc radios they're usually in CSQ for Rx. I'd prefer to know exactly which tones are used for output to block random RF noise, and just for accuracy too.

-Wayne
 

hotdjdave

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kma371 said:
First off, thanks to whoever submitted the information.

Second, it would be helpful to know what some of the Descriptions mean or what the actual frequency use is?

For example, under the fire section, I'm gonna assume that "Crane" "Signal" "Hoffman" are repeater sites? If not, could someone help us out?

Also, under East NPS ops, "MAM PD" is what exactly? A police department i assume?
And under the same section, "INF WAR" "INF JUN" "INF MAM" is what? "INF" I guess it Inyo National Forest?

There is 136.075 listed as FM. Are these supposed to be AM?

What I'm getting at is, these descriptions are very cryptic. Could someone update them so it makes more sense?
Not sure about the "Crane," "Signal," and "Hoffman;" maybe someone will chime in with these.

WAR is Warrant Mountain ; JUN is June Mountain; and MAM is Mammoth Mountain.

I think East NPS Operations CH 14, 15, and 16 are blank (not programed in the radios), so a generic frequency comes up when transmit is pushed and read.
 
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kma371

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wayne_h said:
I'd prefer to know exactly which tones are used for output to block random RF noise, and just for accuracy too.

-Wayne

I'm the same way. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to monitor comms from here, I will try tomorrow with the new stuff that was added.
 

Kirk

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A couple of corrections:

Under East NPS Operations, Mammoth Police repeater should be 155.595, not 155.959 (typo, I'm sure).

Yosemite Park & Curry Company is long gone. The current concessionaire is Delaware North Corporation (DNC). They were initially doing business as Yosemite Concession Services (YCS), but I believe everything goes by DNC now. One concessionaire gets the contract for the whole park.

And a question:

What are channels 14-16 on the East NPS Operations plan? Pretty narrow splits for a repeater (duplexer tuning would be difficult at best). Is that an error, or ?

As you may have guessed from my avatar, I'm a big fan of Yosemite. :) That pic was taken by me of Half Dome from the side, taken from Glacier Point.
 

hotdjdave

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Kirk said:
A couple of corrections:

Under East NPS Operations, Mammoth Police repeater should be 155.595, not 155.959 (typo, I'm sure).

Yosemite Park & Curry Company is long gone. The current concessionaire is Delaware North Corporation (DNC). They were initially doing business as Yosemite Concession Services (YCS), but I believe everything goes by DNC now. One concessionaire gets the contract for the whole park.
Corrections were made; thank you.

Note: I have kept the license names as provided in the FCC database (IAW current call signs and license names, and their expiration dates).


Q:
Kirk said:
And a question: What are channels 14-16 on the East NPS Operations plan? Pretty narrow splits for a repeater (duplexer tuning would be difficult at best).
A:
hotdjdave said:
I think East NPS Operations CH 14, 15, and 16 are blank (not programed in the radios), so a generic frequency comes up when transmit is pushed and read.
 
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Kirk

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hotdjdave said:
Originally Posted by hotdjdave
I think East NPS Operations CH 14, 15, and 16 are blank (not programed in the radios), so a generic frequency comes up when transmit is pushed and read.

Ooops... I plead early and not yet enough coffee.

Also, if memory serves me correctly, the two lowband channels are (or were?) used by the High Sierra camps.
 
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SCPD

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The "East NPS Operations" is not part of Yosemite National Park and channel 1 is not "depot" as listed. I believe what you have here is the channel list for Devils Postpile National Monument (that's right there is not an apostrophe in the name). The official Park Service abbreviation for this unit is "DEPO" and follows the convention of using the first four letters of a single word National Park Unit or the first two letters of the first two words in a double word or more Park unit name. Thus "SEKI" is Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks and DEPO is under the administration of that Park, not Yosemite. You might notice that the simplex frequency this Park unit uses is the direct for the SEKI backcountry net. Thus this "East NPS Operations" should be listed in Mono County even though it is in Madera County, since the vehicle access is only from the east this unit interfaces with Mono County, the Town of Mammoth Lakes, and the Inyo National Forest. The INF is primarily an eastern Sierra Forest but encompesses the upper middle fork of the San Joaquin River drainage due to this same access issue. The frequency 153.950 is the Mammoth Fire Department's Tac 2 channel. I've never heard of an Eastman FD although a long time member of the Mammoth Town Council has a last name of Eastman.

You also don't show tones for each of the channels in this East Operations list. Mount Warren (not Warrant as shown) is the INF repeater on tone 1 which would be 110.9, Mammoth Mountain on tone 2 which is 123.0, and Glass Mountain is tone 3 on 131.8. I'm not sure what tones the Mono SO north and south mean but I would guess Conway would be north on 136.5 and "Lincoln" would be south on 151.4. The Mammoth PD channel has a repeater on the top of Mammoth Mountain and a 151.4 tone is used.

Those last three channels are unkown to me as they are VHF AM Air frequencies and the last time I looked Devils Postpile was using Bendix-Kings. With the new narrowband radios these would have 16 channels and when I worked on the Mammoth Ranger District everyone, including the NPS at DEPO was using the older 14 channel Kings. Since I have no direct working experience with the new BK's I can't say for sure they cannot work both AM and FM, but I would not think so. I worked very closely with the NPS employees at Devils Postpile, in fact having the keys to the Monument, so I could ski down during the winter for doing work on the National Forest, and would stay in one of the employee housing units that we all set up for living in during the winter. I used to stop by their ranger station to use the phone and their base station radio quite often during the summer, so I knew their channel plan by heart at one time.

Under DNC the licenses for the High Sierra Camps on lowband have been terminated. I believe they are now using cell phones off Mt. Hoffman or satellite phones.

On the list for Yosemite National Park it should be noted that Signal and North Peaks are repeaters used on the Fire Net only. The Park Net (172.650) has an input of 171.650 on Mt. Hoffman and 172.025 on Crane Flat and Wawona (actually Wawona Point but called Wawona by the users of the Park Net). I will have to get back to you on the repeaters used on the Fire Net, as I don't have my notes with me right now, they are down in the car and it is too late to go into the garage to get them. I have just returned from three days camping at Yosemite Creek Campground in the Park.

The list for the call signs is not complete as only the non-law enforcement personnel still use the number system for unit identifiers. I made quite a bit of progress figuring them out this weekend. LE personnel all use international phonetic and number combination identifiers with Tango for the Tuiolumne Ranger District or sub-district as it might be. Bravo is for backcountry and there are many more. I will get back to you on those too, when I have time.

The common federal frequency of 168.350 is no longer being used as the primary project net or tactical in the Park. It is something different and I don't know what it is. I wish I had this information for the Park's LE net last Friday (I left earlier than it was posted wouldn't you know) but did have two handhelds set up on search all weekend trying to find out if the rumor of this net was true. All I can say is that while on a backpack 4 or 5 years ago a Park Ranger, who knew some of the same people I know, told me they were working on a seperate LE net for the Park. I can't confirm nor deny its existence at this point.

As for the DNC lists I'm not sure what is correct. I was not able to monitor any simplex traffic from the Valley from Yosemite Creek Campground. I missed taking a trip into the Park last year for the first time in over 20 years so my information on DNC is dated. I will have to take a quick trip to Olmstead Point, where I can monitor a lot of Valley traffic, even low powered. Olmstead is about 75 minutes from home so I should be able to squeeze in a day of monitoring from there before things calm down in the Park when fall arrives.

This weekend was a very good one for monitoring the Park. Lots of action everywhere in the Park, which when driving the roads was no surprise. The peak season of visitation in the Sierra is August and it is usually the craziest. A couple of SAR's, about 5 medivacs, two by helicopter, lots of traffic enforcement with arrests, bear activity from the Valley to White Wolf, an assualt and battery on the trail near Glen Aulin High Sierra Camp, and parking becoming completely full in the Valley. The Park's case file list was at 3,020 for the year as of Sunday morning. The only thing that wasn't active this weekend was fire management.
 

SCPD

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Last weekend I listened to Yosemite National Park for about 20 hours or more. I came up with this for their callsigns.

Bravo = backcountry unit
Charlie = I believe might be campground patrol in the valley, but this is not verified.
Delta = the Hetch Hetchy and Lake Eleanor areas. Not sure why they picked a "D" for this other than the presence of dams in that area of the Park.
Echo = I did not hear this being used on this trip but did a couple of years ago. It did stand for the El Portal subdistrict of the Valley Ranger District.
Hotel = Valley District horse patrol.
Mather = I heard the callsign "Mather 1" a number of times. This leads me to believe that the Mather Ranger District includes the central area of the Park and includes two subdistricts, Mather and Tuolumne. I don't know the present organization of the Park as far as Ranger Districts and each of these subdistricts could actually be full Ranger Districts.
Mike = Mather Ranger District or subdistrict.
Sierra = I did not hear this being used on this trip. I used to think this was for headquarters protection ranger staff, but then guessed it might be for Search and Rescue personnel, who I belive are part of the protection organization. However on this trip I heard S & R personnel using "SAR" as a prefix a couple of times.
Tango = Tuolumne Ranger District or subdistrict. This is not a year round operation as the Tuolumne area is covered in snow without wheeled vehicle access for 7-8 months of the year so I believe this is a subdistrict.
Traffic = a unit that manages the parking lots and roads in the Valley, which has far less parking than the demand for it, especially on weekends.
Victor = Valley Ranger District.
Whiskey = Wawona Ranger District.

These phonetic prefixes are followed by a number with #1 being the District or subdistrict Ranger or unit supervisor. Then there are groups of numbers such as 10 - 19, 20- 29, etc. where 10, 20, etc. is a group or shift supervisor. I thought at first that 10 was the first shift, 20 the second, and 3 the third, but I heard 20's early in the morning and late at night so I'm not sure what the number groups refer to. I heard the 50's number series with the Victor (Valley) prefix at various times of the night and day and could not relate that to shift either.

All phonetic callsigns are assigned to "protection rangers" only. Protection rangers are law enforcement rangers as opposed to interpretive rangers (information, campfire, hikes, visitor centers, tours) and resource managers who may have the title of ranger. Those folks use a number which for Yosemite is 100 for headquarters staff, 200 for the Mather District, 300 for the Valley District, 400 for the Wawona District, 500 for fire management, and 600 for the backcountry unit. I heard 800 being used by various pesonnel including bear management people, possibly CCC (California Conservation Corps crews assigned to projects within the Park), and SCA (Student Conservation Association) crews in the Park. 800 used to be for research personnel but the number of people using this number series has increased. I believe maintenance personnel use the 100 and district call signs.

I've gained all of his information by a conversation with one Tuolumne District or subdistrict protection ranger, a call sign list I obtained in the 80's when I worked with Yosemite personnel as a result of being assigned to an adjacent National Forest, and by listening to traffic content. If anyone else has some observations on this topic, I would love to hear from them.
 

SCPD

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Here is the channel lineup according to an official U.S. Forest Service publication of 2005. This is the last official publication I can obtain, in spite of being a retired USFS employee. Beginning in 2006 the distribution of this publication has been restricted to current employees on a need to know basis only. I would presume this channel lineup is for fire mangement radios and don't know if other functions have the same channel plan or not.

1 172.775/172.775 Fire Net Local
2 172.775/171.800 Fire Repeater Net
3 172.650/172.650 Park Net Local
4 172.650/171.650 Park Net (Use tone 3)
5 172.650/172.025 Park Repeater Net
6 166.300/166.300 Valley Net Local
7 166.300/164.425 Valley Repeater Net
8 168.350/168.350 YNP Project Net/US Govt. Shared Use
9 170.000/170.000 Air to Ground/R-5 Air to Ground
10 168.050/168.050 NIFC Tac 1
11 168.200/168.200 NIFC Tac 2
12 168.600/168.600 NIFC Tac 3
13 172.225/169.925 Sierra NF Fire Repeater Net
14 168.750/170.500 Stanislaus NF Fire Repeater Net

Tones (From north to south)

North Mtn. 4 Use on Channel 2
Mt. Hoffman 3 Use on Channels 2 and 4
Crane Flat 1 Use on Channels 2 and 5
Turtleback 1 Use on Channel 7
Sentinel Dome 2 Use on Channel 7
Sentinel Dome 5 Use on Channel 2
Signal Peak 2 Use on Channel 2
Wawona 2 Use on Channel 5

Of the repeaters I could hear on my most recent trip (Hoffman and Sentinel), I saw the input tone transmitted on the output on the Park, Fire, and Valley nets. I'm not sure if input tones are transmitted on all the other repeaters on all nets. More trips and listening to do!!

I've heard rumors that a law enforcement net will or has been added to the Yosemite NP radio system, and that project nets and air to grounds are to be new frequenices assigned to each large park unit where the need exists. Use of 168.350 and 170.000 can be subject to interference from nearby federal jurisdictions and the NPS wants their own frequencies not subject to this. I scanned 166.125, the Forest Service Region 5 law enforcement net while I was there and did not hear anything. I don't believe that the rumor of an LE net for Yosemite would have NPS using a USFS net for law enforcement as I believe the NPS would want their own net, however, I can't verify that as I heard nothing and had two additional scanners on search in the federal VHF-Hi band going full time as well.
 
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Kirk

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Was everything analog, or did you hear any P25 comms while you were up there?
 

SCPD

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It was all analog. I used my Bendix-King handheld to listen to the Park as it has more sensitivity than my scanners and it is an EPH model. The EPH is not capable of digital.
 
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