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runwayrunway · 9 months

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No. 46 - Royal Flying Doctor Service

In contravention of my normal operating procedures I've fast-tracked this request to the front of my queue because of how fantastically timed it is. It was requested the day my BermudAir post went up, and the moment I saw it I realized I was going to publish it as the next entry on this blog, because I want to highlight something really important and really positive about aviation. So thank you @alionessespride for the impetus to discuss why aviation is genuinely indispensable, regardless of what cynical things people might use it for.

My most recent post on BermudAir is definitely a major downer, and other posts I've done, like my David Neeleman special and various other assorted brief allusions, have been really distinctly pessimistic and jaded about the motivations of airlines. Which I don't regret or think is bad or wrong - these are very omnipresent specters in the airline industry, which is inherently more than a little predatory both due to its necessity for profit and its very heavy ties to the military-industrial complex, with airlines, governments, and manufacturers ending up in elaborate daisy chains of sweetheart deals and making money being sort of incompatible with anything I'd consider a virtue.

But I went on about this in my Neeleman post and sort of alluded to it with BermudAir as well - aviation isn't just that, and it's really hugely important. In addition to the sheer fact that people who live on islands or in remote places with poor infrastructure can easily access the rest of the world, aviation provides a lot of important services - weather research/surveillance, aerial firefighting, aerial inspection of things like power lines, agricultural work, greatly increasing the speed and thoroughness of search and rescue, and of course air medical services.

If you live in a major city you probably get a handful of ambient helicopters (I've been told a lot of people find them annoying because they tend to fly quite low), and if you've ever wondered what they are, they're probably medevac helicopters. There's a chance they're news, or private helicopters, or something else, but most of the time they're there to airlift people to hospitals if their condition is too dire to wait for the length of time an ambulance would take to get them to the trauma center, and a helicopter can easily land in a small, precise area and bring them there.

Which is all well and good, but that's for large cities. But most of the world actually isn't large cities. Case in point: most of Australia is borderline empty.

Most of Australia is on par with places like Alaska. While it's overall the fourth least dense country in the world, that density is wildly skewed and the best thing I can say for the dark green section is that it's still denser than Greenland, but not denser than Mongolia. Safe to say you aren't getting an ambulance if you live in there. So what if you have an acute medical problem which needs immediate attention to prevent your death?

The Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) is probably the best-known aeromedical service. It was the first such organization, nearly 100 years old, established in 1928. They provide medical services, particularly in medical emergencies, to the parts of Australia where getting someone to a hospital would probably otherwise take days. They also provide telehealth services, transfer of patients between hospitals, and transport general practitioners to places which lack access to primary care, among other things.

The initial ask requesting them outlined a lot of this:

RFDS is an absolute lifeline in rural, regional, and remote Australia, staffed with flight doctors and nurses that fly out 24/7/365. Often they land on runways that are actually just roads or dirt strips, sometimes with the runway lit up for a night landing with rolls of toilet paper dipped in kerosene and lit on fire. They move patients that may be many many hours from any medical service, as first responders to an incident or as a medical evacuation service for small hospitals to big city hospitals.

It takes a special kind of skill to land a plane somewhere like this, and an even more special kind of skill to do paramedic work while someone is landing the plane you're in somewhere like this.

While initially RFDS just rented their airplanes and pilots from Qantas, these days they have their own fleet and pilots, and while it's hard to find exact numbers because of their several regional branches their planes number in the triple-digits and are mostly small-to-medium and capable of operation on very short, poorly-equipped airstrips (STOL). The most-used models are the Pilatus PC-12 turboprop, Pilatus PC-24 very light jet, and Beechcraft King Air 200 twin-turboprop.

They have a couple of different liveries, presumably varying by time and branch, so I'm going to stick with one I think is both more visibly distinct and more current.

Here's a fairly standard example of this livery. The 7NEWS sticker is, I believe, a sponsor - there are different ones on different planes. As you can see, the livery is primarily red, white, and blue, which I suppose is fair enough for a non-profit service in a country with a flag based on the Union Jack, though I still find it a bit of a pedestrian choice. That said, it's at least quite an ambulancey color scheme, though it's missing giant strobe lights and a siren. I think you could install those on a plane (I mean, strobe lights are actually mandatory, just not that type) but I feel like you also shouldn't, and this is better.

Here's a view from below, so you can see the clear and bright underside with RFDS emblazoned very visibly on it. Being easy to spot and identify is a broadly desirable trait in an emergency medical vehicle, and I love their specific choice in shade of fire-engine red. Note also the suspension on the landing gear and the weather radar on the wing facing towards the camera. The PC-12 is an incredibly designed aircraft which is popular for good reason, and is very well-suited to exactly what the RFDS is doing.

The white is used in a very interesting way, where the transition between it being a dividing line separating red from blue and the main body of the aircraft with the blue as just a swash is very very subtle, and the taper of the red is extremely well-executed. The red underside is excellent because it specifically prevents the blue and white from blending in with the sky, which wouldn't be ideal.

The Royal Flying Doctor Service and/or RFDS name is placed in three distinct places - the underside, the rudder, and above the windows. My gripe is that I wish they were a little bigger and more visible, I think. I'm not sure about the rudder, but I think a relatively easy fix would be to make the text above the windows bold and red - perhaps they just wanted to sequester the red fully to the bottom of the plane rather than having it on both sides of the blue, which I understand but don't think I fully endorse.

Another great view of how the red tapers, though, and the blue's termination just below the nose, far enough back that the end is still clearly visible behind the propeller. I've always felt like PC-12s (and similar single-prop aircraft but for some reason especially the PC-12) look like they have a moustache, and this adds a pair of whiskers. I enjoy that.

Admittedly, with the painted nacelles on the King Air something about it can begin to get a little...plastic-looking, I don't have any way to word it better. The blue in general isn't my favorite - unlike the saturated red's strikingness, it just sort of looks over-saturated in a way that I dislike. I'm not sure what would fix this. Maybe a darker blue?

Now, the RFDS's livery is by far the least worth-discussing thing about them. The service that they provide goes way beyond appearances, and because of that and because of the fact that designing liveries for smaller planes like this begins to get difficult I'm going to not be as harsh to them as I would other subjects. I'm just not really going to take into account the fact that this is a pretty generic scheme, because that's fine, there's no reason to care. My main takeaways are that the placement of the colors is quite well-executed, and that I wish the wordmark on the main fuselage body was more distinct. In photographs it's honestly downright illegible, and the text on the rudder doesn't exactly pop out either. The tailfin, in general, looks a little cluttered, like they didn't want to leave it empty but couldn't figure out what to do with it - the RFDS text doesn't even appear centered. But at the very least it's visible, which is crucial for an air ambulance service. Maybe I wish there was less white, but there's enough red and blue, and it's bright enough, so it's done its job.

That said, I'm giving them a C.

This is exactly what I expect of them. They've done a completely adequate job, and probably in a roundabout way it's good they've been spending their money on things that aren't genius graphic design. So if you have anything to take away from this post, don't have it be the grade, or even the fact that the Pilatus PC-12 is a really fantastic airplane - have it be the fact that aviation isn't just airline startups and massive conglomerates, and that it literally saves lives and provides services that we city-dwellers take for granted to people who would otherwise have to go without.

#tarmac fashion week #grade: c #region: oceania #region: australia #era: 2010s #era: 2020s #(earliest use of this livery I could find was 2013 but I'm sure it's older)#royal flying doctor service #non airline liveries #requests

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loveisinthebat · 1 year

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I don’t actually know what to say about this Picture.

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janeway-lover · 2 months

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about to get into the most nonsense argument with my stepdad about whether or not Australia is a continent or not

#i say it is. cause that's how its classified #he says it's not cause that classification is only from the 50s #at which point i responded that he is NOT that old #he says australia is part of oceania. which is what used to be the thing #but it's not anymore. now oceania is defined as a region not a continent

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arturleclerc-archive · 4 months

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#HELL YEAH #roman bilinski #formula regional oceania #formula regional #freca

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spiceandtealeaves · 7 months

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I’ve been working on a cardverse that’s centered on more characters rather then just Europeans and man I’m wondering on how to split it YBJH

#but I’ll need to think about it more lmao #p: not hetalia #I’m *thinking #thing regions as of rn: Africa-Europe-Asia-Oceania-Americas?#and it’s- been hard YVJH especially fitting in like Middle East. might add them in Africa and Asian kindgdoms and as cards? I’m thinking T-T

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zahra-hydris · 7 months

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thinking about resubbing to ffxiv again

but how dead is my data centre...?

#yes in case you're wondering seeing so many people talking about it on my dash gave me The (Dark) Urge #i could play on a different server but I don't wanna abandon the oceania DC #squeenix plz open up cross region travel :(

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travelbinge · 2 years

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By Cuba Gallery Landscape

Omaha, Auckland Region, New Zealand

#curators on tumblr #sea #ocean #blue #beach #landscape #nature #new zealand #omaha #auckland region #oceania #cuba gallery landscape

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hussyknee · 1 year

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If you're dual citizens or parents are from different countries, please tag both. Include a cool fact about your country as well if you like. :)

(Tumblr only has ten options, so I've mostly divided the regions into Western/ non-Western.)

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caleb-is-existing · 4 months

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- Formula Regional Oceania Championship, Manfield, Circuit Chris Amon

#motorsports #formula regional #formula regional oceania #there was a red flag cause it was so wet #formula 1 could never

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spidermilkshake · 1 year

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Ancardia's Greatest Monstrosities: The Manananggal

Classification: Monstrosity (horror)

Habitat: Warm, humid jungle and caverns.

The Manananggal is among the most feared monstrous undead horrors to be found in all of Ancardia, made all the worse by their evil-natured method of creation and their great calculating intellect. These creatures can assume a form which very accurately passes as a normal humanoid, which they maintain during the day. At night, they shapeshift back into their true hideous form and separate their upper portion from their lower one, leaving it behind in order to fly out and seek out victims. Like ghul, the manananggal must sustain itself with either raw flesh or living blood, and given how it is created it usually chooses the latter, and in egregiously lethal ways.

Manananggal are created by particularly sinister necromancers, usually in service of a violent cult but sometimes also on their lonesome for purposes of vengeance or threatening locals. Unlike ghul, manananggal are not conscious individuals with free will, but rather animated by the will of a possessing evil entity, usually a lesser demonic or stagnatic being. When the manananggal’s body is destroyed or consecrated, the link between itself and the fiend is severed and it can no longer control the body. One of the primary methods of monster-hunters to rid an area of a manananggal is to find the place where it stashes its lower body each night, usually in a damp cave, cellar, or in a locked room somewhere. Once the lower body is found, burning it, salting the cut-off stump, or lacing the stump with a potent natural acid such as lime juice or vinegar are the usual ways to prevent the upper half from rejoining before dawn; if the manananggal can’t reconnect with its lower half, it will wither away and die automatically.

During the day, manananggal are generally indistinguishable from ordinary folk—whatever species they choose to resemble. Many reported manananggal have taken the form of humans, and some of ratlings, hurthlings, half-orcs and the odd wood elf; manananggal in some areas are known to have disproportionately created from the corpses of women, generally in regions where femicide is more common and usually at the hands of the necromancer taking out violence against women and girls they know. This has, in some of these areas, led to the idea manananggal are all female and are not possessed of evil beings, but are the result of promiscuous, improper, or otherwise taboo behaviour in women and arise from the lady’s jealous ghost. This unfortunately tends to reinforce the social trend towards misogyny in these parts. In some regions, these horrific creations are known as Penangglan, or as Krasue, but they are all three some variation on this bloody and evil-natured ritual.

#Ancardia #Ancardian Homebrew #homebrew #DnD like #ADOM #fantasy #monstrosity #undead adjacent #Filipino mythology #undead #Manananggal #Penangglan #Krasue #upper body insides monsters #there are SO MANY of those in the Oceania and SE Asia region's folklore

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runwayrunway · 10 months

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No. 39 - Qantas

...huh. Well, today I learned Qantas is actually an acronym for Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services. The more you know!

Qantas, the flag carrier of Australia, is the biggest fish I've covered so far. Yes, bigger than Lufthansa. Qantas is one of the airlines. They're the second-oldest continuously operating airline in the world, they're often mistakenly claimed to have had no fatal crashes (they have never lost a plane or a passenger in the crash of a jet, but had several fatal crashes prior to 1951), and they have a dinosaur named after them.

They didn't make a commemorative livery for the Qantassaurus. I just don't understand that.

Now, they do have a handful of special liveries that I will cover in the future, because they're very interesting. They also have some significantly less interesting older liveries. But today I'm only here to talk about their default livery, the one they're using today.

I'm honestly exhausted.

So the first thing that I need to mention is that this is Lufthansa-shaped. Lufthansesque. This isn't even that long-looking of a plane but already the detachedness of the tail is really noticeable. In its defense, Lufthansa was ripping Qantas off and not the other way around - this livery was introduced all the way back in 1984, making it truly ahead of its time. Unfortunately, it was a massive downgrade from the earlier quite cromulent 707 liveries.

The tail isn't exactly consistent. Some have no trim at all, some have a very thin grey line, and some have this decent-looking layered grey shading, and it seems completely inconsistent across models and times. Not that it would have improved my opinion tangibly, but I can't even actually count it.

You know what's strange? I have to hand it to Qantas - their logo, the silhouette of the kangaroo, is well-designed, recognizable, and I would go so far as to say iconic. But look at that graceful bit of grey shading on it. It's on the newer airplanes, but it's so subtle you might easily miss it (I actually did) - they clearly know how to use shadow, so what's with the unadorned white fuselage?

As for the font, it's definitely balanced a lot better than Lufthansa and looks very nice, but it doesn't solve the issue. Not even close. It reminds me a bit of WestJet's livery.

They even ripped off the 'Spirit of Australia' thing. I know you weren't involved in this, but I still blame you, David.

There just isn't much to say about Qantas, unfortunately. I think I like the little cut-ins on the engines. I like the logo. I just think they should have got around to designing an actual livery at some point. Such a storied airline owes it to themself, and they owe it to me even more.

Final grade: D+.

#tarmac fashion week #era: 1980s #era: 1990s #era: 2000s #era: 2010s #era: 2020s #grade: d+#region: oceania #region: australia #qantas #flag carriers #lufthansa line

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