Sensible radio channels for wildfire operations - USA
Most radios seems to have 16 channels per bank. Each radio can scan 1
bank at a time. It would seem to make sense to set up radios in chunks
of 16 channels.
1. Smokejumpers can show up at any wildfire. So lets include 168.55 in
all radios.
2. 168.625 should be in all radios - emerg comms to aircraft
3. 151.1375 is the Vtac calling channel. This channel should be in
every public safety radio in case of End Of The World As We Know It.
4. Maybe 155.34 should be in all radios for EMS comms.
5. Maybe 155.475 should be in all radios for police comms.
This leaves 11 channels per bank that can be allocated for local ops.
Many agencies probably would want Bank 1 to be the normal day to day
channels. Bank 2 could be a bank for extended attack operations with
NIFC channels. Bank 3 could be a travel channel bank - used when
travelling outside of the normal service area.
Bottom line - Bank 1 would be normal day to day ops. Bank 2 would be
for a local big fire. Bank 3 would be used when travelling to an
incident far away. The other banks could be various initial attack
zones from around the USA. I think there might be 150 of them IIRC (in
the western USA).