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Spent a week camping along the Chiwawa River in Lake Wenatchee area. Lots of fire traffic. First, the Fischer Fire near Peshastin was using 159.33 DNR as their 'command' freq and lots of simplex, which they called TAC XX or whatever. But then they took down the 159.33 Rptr Friday when a national team took over. I didn't get a chance to get close to the fire to find the new freqs.
I finally got a look at the Forest Service frequency booklet for this year. It's a user's guide for those using the Bendix King portables in the Wenatchee and Okanogan forests. Didn't get enuf time to copy the Okanogan NSF freqs but here's what the radios in the Wenatchee forest contain.
Radios are programmed with the Group concept and each Group (or bank) is set up for 16 frequencies. Group is the Forest Svc terminology for each separate Ranger District. Frequent radio traffic goes something like this -- "Wenatchee, 7-Hart" Hart is the last name of an employee in the Group 7 or Leavenworth Ranger District (he's the FPO-Fire Protection Officer for that district) and he's calling dispatch central in City of Wenatchee as opposed to his specific ranger station.
Group 2 Chelan, Group 3 Cle Elum, Group 4 Methow Valley,
Group 5 Entiat , Group 6 Lk Wenatchee, Group 7 Leavenworth, Group 8 Naches, Group 9 Tonasket.
Forest Net 1 is primary freq for # 6&7 groups on 171.5. Forest Net 2 is primary freq at least #5 & 2 on 172.25. (I couldn't spend too much time copying info from the guide, whose title is Okanogan & Wenatchee Nat'l Forest Radio Communications Guide-2004.) Okanogan NF using different primary freqs
Modes of communication - (example is for Leavenworth&Lake Wenatchee districts)
1-when they are in the same river valley, say the Chiwawa, they use Net 1 in simplex mode. When calling their local district, like Lake Wenatchee, they try simplex first then switch to repeater mode if they can't communicate simplex. When calling Wenatchee central dispatch, they use repeater mode for more important traffic rather than having their local district office relay for them.
2- when they need a repeater, they switch channels to the closest repeater site so that input freq to repeaters is the same but the PL tone is different. They will say -- "Wentachee...7-Hart on Alpine." This alerts Wenatchee to listen to the Alpine receiver (rptr is at the manned lookout site called Alpine on Nason Ridge between US2 and Lake Wenatchee).
Repeater Site Freq input (I'm not going to bother with PL tones)
Alpine 166.3>Net 1
Dirty Face 166.3>Net 1 peak @ NW corner Lk Wenatchee
Icicle 166.3>Net 1 unsure but somewhere on Icicle Creek Rd
Burch Mtn 166.3>Net 1 NW of Wenatchee across Columbia River
Natapoc 166.3>Net 1 closest to intersection of US 2 and Hwy 207 (which is where you turn north to go to Lake Wenatchee area)
Channels programmed for Leavenworth-Lk Wenatchee districts
Ch 1 - 171.50 Forest Net 1
Ch 2 - 172.25 Forest Bet 2
Ch 3--170.125 simplex
Ch 4 - 166.675 input to Net 2 used by Entiat, etc.
Ch 5 - 173.050 booklet just says Wenatchee Fire (rarely heard)
Ch 6 - 168.200 TAC
Ch 7 - 159.225 Area 2C DNR repeater
Ch 8 - 151.475 input to DNR Ch 7 rptr
Ch 9 - 151.415 DNR Common (think this is only simplex but unsure)
Ch 10 - 153.83 State Red Net (don't know much about this one)
Ch 11 - 159.27 DNR Air to ground (was used a lot for ground crews directing air tankers and helos fighting Fischer Fire)
Ch 12 --Chelan Co Fire #2 154.43
Ch 13 --Chelan Co Fire #3 154.25
Ch 14 -- 164.5625 Forest Service Region 6. HQ for NW forests so this freq should be in every FS radio.
15 & 16 show they are unused. I also show a 168.750 in my list but not sure what this is, and I've misplaced what Forest Service Air Attack simplex frequency is.
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