Tone 3 located in the north east part of the forest has been having issues for most of the winter. We have not been able to access this site due to unsafe travel because of heavy snow load. The site has been reported as an intermittent problem with minimal risk. I had prioritized this to be a medium impact and scheduled it below other more critical failures for the forest and Service area. During the Loganville fire on July 11th the Forest Service engine 332 heard of a fire in their coverage area on a cooperators Frequency and responded. Because they could not reach FS dispatch using tone 3 they communicated with Downieville Fire using their Frequency. Because the communications had to be relayed to ECC there was confusing.
Downieville Fire Rpt in located on Ruby Bluff collocated with Tahoe NF tone 9 after this SafeNet was filed tone9 was reported to me that it could not reach the fire. For this problem I will redirect a tech to verify as to why tone 9 was ineffective. The fire personnel eventually switch to Fire Net tone 3 which allowed communications with Forest Service Dispatch.
After talking with the Division we agreed to keep the current schedule for the repair of this Communication site. To address the issue of reliability we discussed some solutions that we could try. Currently there is small panels on the roof of the old Lookout which require a ladder to reach. All the antennas are small Omni vhf antennas mounted on poles attached to the railing. I believe if we updated the Solar system to a larger free standing grid and get off of the roof of the Lookout. I could then increase the capacity of the Batteries allowing us to increase the radios power amplifiers. I would also recommend installing higher gain larger antennas with down tilt but these will also need to move from the Lookout. This would give us more stability thru out the winter while increasing coverage. Because this is a Historical site it would need Forest Approval to do any construction. |
