Morning All,

As of 1st July, 2020 Fire Rescue Victoria comes alive, officially that is. In one of our previous articles we touched on some of the expected changes that would be heard with appliance callsigns. One of the other changes you’ll hear is that the ever faithful callsign of ‘VKN8’ will be no more, it is to be replaced with ‘FIRECOM’.

The ‘VKN8’ callsign for those unaware was the equivalent to Victoria Police’s ‘VKC’ and one that has been around since the then MFB were active on the AM Medium Frequency band.
The ‘VKN8’ callsign has long been the link that leads those on the ground or in the appliances using their radio to the ever helpful staff in at ESTA, and in times even before Intergaph and ESTA, a team of directly employed Metropolitan Fire Brigade staff working in call-taking, dispatch and communications, whilst sitting in a complex at Eastern Hill Fire Station (Fire Station 1) before the move out to Tally Ho in Burwood East.

For those listening monitoring the Country Fire Authority on the RMR Network you will note that a collective of talkgorups will in fact be patched to Fire Rescue Victoria’s dispatch talkgroups on the MMR Network.

The reason for the patches is to permit CFA Volunteers to have access to FRV communications in times of Mutual Aid and the like. This is in addition to those Brigades who have received MMR capable portables.

It should be noted that at this time it is expected that listeners may hear a combination of ‘VICFIRE’ and ‘FIRECOM’ callsign depending on who is making the call, that being FRV or CFA. Both will be accepted for now. As for ‘VKN8’, well we may only hear that from those who now need to break a practice they’ve exercised their whole career.

Happy Scanning Folks!

Categories:Fire, Hobby Chat, MMR Network, RMR Network

Tags: Country Fire Authority, feature, featured, Fire Recuse Victoria, FRV, Metropolitan Fire Brigade, MMR, MMR Network, RMR, RMR Network, Scanners, scanning, VKC, VKN8