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It has been an interesting fire season.

There are mutual aid channels in CA fire radios that are mandatory for any agency that provides mutual aid. They are a mixture of federal, state, and local frequencies. This makes radios somewhat plug-n-play when a swarm of fire trucks and firefighters descend on a fire regardless of where it is. All mutual aid radios must have VHF and there are optional UHF/700/800 channels.

LA County acquired some old VHF IMTS mobile phone, RCC, and paging frequencies and set up some repeaters with countywide coverage, likely both siimulcast and voted. These channels usually only light up during major fires and this is the only time I've heard all of them active. These "command" channels are part of the statewide mandatory mutual aid channels: 152.150, 152.240, 152.540, 152.570, and 152.780.

Good information, Rich.

WA State Fire departments sent a bunch of rigs for mutual aid. Some companies likely VHF only, others 700/800mhz only.

Unless LA County is using the NIFOG 700/800mhz stuff, I suspect the Mutual Aid companies will have to get loaner portables to interop locally.

The COM-T and COM-L folks in LA are really working overtime!

Brad.

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Whatever.....

Army National Guard patrolling the Palisades/Topanga is using the 8TAC91 repeater. That is beyond the range of an MBITR so perhaps they are using borrowed radios ?

On the UTAC41 repeater there are search teams (SAR/CERT?) canvassing the area and "marking" addresses in Altadena.

Can't go wrong scanning mutual aid channels during/after a major event.

Check out scancal.org for lots of fire frequencies !

https://www.scancal.org/airattack/index.html

https://www.scancal.org/calfire/index.html

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" SILENCE IS CONSENT "

Jim N7UAP - Bellingham, WA / InterceptRadio.com

I would suggest always having those channels in a bank to run daily.

Here in Boston many are used regularly and V/U/8 are commonly in a Tri-Stack
and patched during our LARGE events (Head of the Charles, Boston Marathon, Championship Parades etc)