National Wildfire Coordinating Group

RT-130, Wildland Fire Safety Training Annual Refresher (WFSTAR)

Radios of Fire

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This module gives a national perspective on communication, radios, frequency issues and preseason suggestions.
Category: Communications
Core Component(s): Local Topics;
Incident Reviews and Lessons Learned;
Human Factors, Communication and Decision Making
Estimated Delivery Time: 30 minutes; Video Length: 10:58

 

Intent

Increase understanding of national fire radios, repeaters, frequency utilization, and radio maintenance.

Facilitator Preparation

  • Review the video and module tools.
  • Consider additional activities and discussion questions pertinent to the location and agency.
  • Consider having handheld radios available to demonstrate proper usage.

Facilitating the Discussion

  • Show the video.
  • Facilitate a small or large group discussion using the discussion questions.

Discussion Questions

  1. Is annual maintenance performed on your radios? If so, where does the maintenance take place?
  2. What do you and your crew do before fire season to refresh on proper radio usage?
  3. Have you been on a large incident with frequency crossover issues from another incident? How was this mitigated?
  4. If a radio frequency changed and needed to be hand-programmed into your radio during the middle of a shift, would you know how?
  5. Have you been on an incident where someone’s antenna broke or fell out of their radio? What was the outcome?

Resources

Additional Video Information

This video is also available as a download. (Size 144 MB)​
Download the .srt file for closed captioning (you may need to right click and Save As). For information on how to add closed captioning to a video, see this how to page.

Note: For Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, right click the word download and select Save Link As; for Internet Explorer (IE), right click and select Save Target As.

 

 

 

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Page Last Modified / Reviewed: 
2023-08-24

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