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Stumbled upon this after reading our Fire Chief's monthly letter to the commissioners which talks about this bill:

http://www.washingtonvotes.org/2010-HB-2667

I think it means that responding agencies would be required by law to establish a radio frequency by which all responding personnel and apparatus would be required to communicate on if the fire jumps jurisdictions.

Interesting.

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Interoperability is an attitude, not a technology.

North East Dispatch has been doing good since they consolidated DNR & USFS radio.

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I've long wondered why they hadn't done it before! During Fire Storm 91 in Spokane, they called for resources from across the state and beyond to assist with the out of control fires and so many of responding crews did not have the ability to communicate with each other. I would go home at night and listen to the scanner searching all the possible bands that the fire service could occupy. There were alot of companies that even though they had the same frequencies in their radios, they were using different CT's and therefore, they were deaf to each other. If we have LERN for L.E. on a statewide basis, why don't they have similar systems for the Fire service across the state? They could call it FERS (pronounced Furs) for Fire Emergency Radio Service or FERN (Fire Emergency Radio Network). I realize they have Red Net (153.830), but due to the potential of having multiple fronts, one frequency is not enough.

Isn't this what the VCALL/VTAC frequencies are for ?

From the Tri City Herald

"Pasco Fire Chief Gear said the bills are a good first step, but that the bigger problem with communication in a no man's land is the lack of radio towers to transmit signals.

He said at the Dry Creek Complex Fire, responders were able to talk from truck to truck, but not over a widespread area."

The other bill seems to make sense addressing fire response in a no man's land.

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"I was installing un-programmed radios"

In the past I've heard both DNR & USFS pop up a temporary repeater on the upwind/ non threatened ridge.
I talked with the commo guy on 146.520 on the tripod complex fire; he stated sometimes they pull freqs from a national pool based on location and interference issues. They do this only with large wild fires when there's a command/ support structure.

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On the Dry Creek fire, Yakima County fire has a repeater up on Rattlesnake Ridge which was close to that area. I do also believe that Benton County and Hanford have repeaters up there too. I've heard different locations of where the repeater actually is (how far down the ridge the repeater is from Yakima) but is it the fact that the repeaters aren't there or that their radios aren't programmed with the frequencies? I'm sure the political crap "we don't want you talking on our frequencies" gets in the way I'm sure because I know it's damn prevalent here in the County.

Rich, it's funny you'd mention the VCALL/VTAC. I've seen those buried in our dept. radios 3-4 banks down and on others right in the main bank (Grant County). (You're also limited to 16 channels in a bank with those dumb batwing radios that everybody seems to flock to and you can't fill them all up with the mutual aid channels, I know) I've also seen those with the 156.7 tone only on the TX side, only on the RX Side and sometimes on both sides. There is no consistency state-wide and that's what we really need.

Does anyone have a list of the national pool that DNR/FS will pull from?

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Interoperability is an attitude, not a technology.

The Forest service guy told me it was a dynamic list. 161.100 is the only one I remember. The list I made got lost when I migrated a computer.
The cool thing is they usually put out the freqs over the air on the large fires. Last summer was quiet up in the NE part of the state.

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I believe 161.100 is AAR 66.

The VTAC, and VCALL channels are only intended to have a TX PL (156.7 nation wide) on the subscriber units, the hill top radios have encode, and decode.

On a side note one county in SW Washington has all of the VTAC's with a 131.8 PL encode/decode. I don't know who's idea that was (I assume it was DWS that set did that), but we questioned it when programming new radios and were told "that is the county list, it is correct so don't change it"

Jim

My memory is terrible. That is a 'road' channel isn't it?
Maybe it was 166.1. I remember the '1'.

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I've seen that too, I can't remember where though.

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Interoperability is an attitude, not a technology.

check out http://www.npstc.org for the proper pl's

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I generate Board Warnings

Outlaw almost had it. 163.100, not 161.100.

It's used along with 168.350 as an "itinerant" freq that any Federal agency can use.
It often is used by Forest Service fire crews traveling from one location to another to coordinate the convoy.

There are some Canadian border issues with OSCCR and the VCALL/VTAC freqs.
The only one that can be used statewide is VTAC1, 151.1375 Mhz.

More about that can be found here:
http://www.emd.wa.gov/telcom/telcom_osccr.shtml

Kerwin