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Roy Buchanan

Leroy "Roy" Buchanan (September 23, 1939 – August 14, 1988) was an American guitarist and blues musician. A pioneer of the Telecaster sound, Buchanan worked as a sideman and as a solo artist, with two gold albums early in his career and two later solo albums that made it to the Billboard chart. He never achieved stardom, but is considered a highly influential guitar player. Guitar Player praised him as having one of the "50 Greatest Tones of All Time." He appeared on the PBS music program Austin City Limits in 1977 (season 2).

Birth and early career: 1939–1960
Leroy Buchanan was born in Ozark, Arkansas, and was raised there and in Pixley, California, a farming area between Visalia and Bakersfield. His father was a sharecropper in Arkansas and a farm laborer in California. Buchanan told interviewers the fiction that that his father was a fiddle-playing preacher, which was repeated in Guitar Player magazine but disputed by his older brother J.D. Buchanan told how his first musical memories were of racially mixed revival meetings he attended with his mother, Minnie. "Gospel," he recalled, "that's how I first got into black music." He in fact drew upon many disparate influences while learning to play the guitar (though he later claimed his aptitude derived from being "half-wolf"). He initially showed talent on steel guitar before switching to guitar in the early 50s, and started his professional career at age 15, in Johnny Otis's rhythm and blues revue.

In 1958, Buchanan made his recording debut with Chicago's Chess Records at age 19, accompanying Dale Hawkins by playing the solo on "My Babe. Two years later, during a tour through Toronto, Buchanan left Dale Hawkins to play for Hawkins's cousin Ronnie Hawkins and tutor Ronnie's guitar player, Robbie Robertson. Buchanan plays bass on the Ronnie Hawkins single "Who Do You Love?". Buchanan soon returned to the United States, and members of the Ronnie Hawkins' group later gained fame as the roots rock group the Band. In the early 1960s, Buchanan often played as a sideman with various rock bands, and he played guitar in recording sessions with Freddy Cannon, Merle Kilgore, and others. At the end of the 1960s, with a growing family, Buchanan left the music industry to learn a trade and trained as a barber.

Recording career: 1961–1988
In 1961 he released "Mule Train Stomp", his first single for Swan, featuring rich guitar tones. Buchanan's 1962 recording with drummer Bobby Gregg, nicknamed "Potato Peeler," first introduced the trademark Buchanan "pinch" harmonic. An effort to cash in on the British Invasion caught Buchanan with the British Walkers. In the mid-1960s, Buchanan settled down in the Washington, D.C., area, playing for Danny Denver's band for many years while acquiring a reputation as "...one of the very finest rock guitarists around. Jimi Hendrix would not take up the challenge of a 'pick-off' with Roy." The facts behind that claim are that in March 1968 a photographer friend, John Gossage gave Buchanan tickets to a concert by the Jimi Hendrix Experience at the Washington Hilton. "Buchanan was dismayed to find his own trademark sounds, like the wah-wah that he'd painstakingly produced with his hands and his Telecaster, created by electronic pedals. He could never attempt Hendrix's stage show, and this realization refocused him on his own quintessentially American roots-style guitar picking."

Gossage recalls how Roy was very impressed by the Hendrix 1967 debut album Are You Experienced?, which was why he made sure to give Roy a ticket to the early show at the Hilton. Gossage went backstage to take photos and tried to convince Jimi to go and see Roy at the Silver Dollar that night after the show, but Jimi seemed more interested in hanging out with the young lady who was backstage with him. Hendrix never showed up at the Silver Dollar, but Gossage did talk to Roy about seeing the Hilton show. That same night (as the Hilton show) Roy did several Hendrix numbers and "from that point on, had nothing but good things to say about Hendrix". He later released recordings of the Hendrix composition "If 6 Was 9" and the Hendrix hit "Hey Joe" (written by Billy Roberts and first recorded by The Leaves). In the early 1970s he performed in the Washington, D.C.–Maryland–Virginia area with the Danny Denver Band, which had a following in the area. Buchanan was also popular as a solo act in the D.C. area at this time.

Buchanan's life changed in 1971, when he gained national notice as the result of an hour-long PBS television documentary. Entitled Introducing Roy Buchanan, and sometimes mistakenly called The Best Unknown Guitarist in the World, it earned a record deal with Polydor Records and praise from John Lennon and Merle Haggard, besides an alleged invitation to join the Rolling Stones which he turned down and which gave him the nickname "the man who turned the Stones down". He may have turned the Stones down for two reasons. He may have feared abusing drugs and alcohol more if he joined them, and dying, like Brian Jones. And he may have felt that his own career as he was then pursuing it had promising directions that he could not follow as well if he joined the Stones. In 1977, he appeared on the PBS music program Austin City Limits during Season 2. He recorded five albums for Polydor, one of which, Second Album, went gold, and after that another three for Atlantic Records, one of which, 1977's Loading Zone, also went gold. Buchanan quit recording in 1981, vowing never to enter a studio again unless he could record his own music his own way. Four years later, Alligator Records coaxed Buchanan back into the studio.

His first album for Alligator, When a Guitar Plays the Blues, was released in the spring of 1985. It was the first time he had total artistic freedom in the studio. His second Alligator LP, Dancing on the Edge (with vocals on three tracks by Delbert McClinton), was released in the fall of 1986. He released the twelfth and last album of his career, Hot Wires, in 1987. Buchanan's last show was on August 7, 1988, at Guilford Fairgrounds in Guilford, Connecticut.

Death
According to his agent and others, Buchanan was doing well, having gained control of his drinking habit and playing again, when he was arrested for public intoxication after a domestic dispute. He was found hanged from his own shirt in a jail cell on August 14, 1988, in the Fairfax County, Virginia, Jail. According to Thomas Hartman, who was in a cell near Buchanan's, the deputy sheriff opened the door early in the morning and found Buchanan with the shirt around his neck. His cause of death was officially recorded as suicide, a finding disputed by Buchanan's friends and family. One of his friends, Marc Fisher, reported seeing Roy's body with bruises on the head.

After his death, compilation and other albums continue to be released, including in 2004 the never-released first album he recorded for Polydor, The Prophet. Roy Buchanan is interred at Columbia Gardens Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.

Equipment
Buchanan used a number of guitars in his career, although he was most often associated with a 1953 Fender Telecaster, serial number 2324, nicknamed "Nancy." At some point "Nancy" had jumbo frets installed, but remained largely original. There are two very different stories explaining how Buchanan got the guitar. He himself said that, while enrolled in 1969 in a school to learn to be a hairdresser, he ran after a guy walking down the street with that guitar, and bought him a purple Telecaster to trade. Buchanan also owned a Butterscotch Blonde 1952 Fender Telecaster that eventually wound up in the possession of Wishbone Ash guitarist Andy Powell. A friend of Buchanan's, however, said that Buchanan was playing a Gibson Les Paul at the time, and traded it for the '53 Tele. One of Buchanan's Telecasters was later owned by Danny Gatton and Mike Stern, who lost it in a robbery. He was reported using a 1956 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop Reissue for some time. Early in 1979 he switched to a 1975 sunburst Fender Stratocaster for a few years. Also, he used to play a Gibson L-5 CES when he was very young.

Tone and technique
Buchanan played the Telecaster through a Fender Vibrolux amplifier with the volume and tone "full out," and used the guitar's volume and tone controls to control volume and sound (he achieved a wah wah effect using the tone control). To achieve his desired distorted sounds, Buchanan at one point used a razor blade to slit the paper cones of the speakers in his amp, an approach also employed by the Kinks' Dave Davies and others. Buchanan rarely used effects pedals, though he started using an Echoplex on A Street Called Straight (1976). In his later career he played with a Boss DD-2 delay.

Buchanan taught himself various playing techniques, including "chicken picking". He sometimes used his thumb nail rather than a plectrum, and also employed it to augment his index finger and pick. Holding the pick between his thumb and forefinger, Buchanan also plucked the string and simultaneously touched it lightly with the lower edge of his thumb at one of the harmonic nodes, thus suppressing lower overtones and emphasising the harmonic, sometimes referred to as pinch harmonics, though Buchanan called it an "overtone." Buchanan could play harmonics at will, and could mute individual strings with free right-hand fingers while picking or pinching others. He was famous as well for his oblique bends.

This was particularly notable in his approach to using double and triple stops.

Legacy
Buchanan has influenced many guitarists, including Robbie Robertson, Gary Moore, Danny Gatton, Arlen Roth, Jeff Beck, David Gilmour, Jerry Garcia, Mick Ronson, Nils Lofgren, Jim Campilongo, and Steve Kimock; Beck dedicated his version of "Cause We've Ended As Lovers" from Blow by Blow to him. His work is said to "stretch the limits of the electric guitar," and he is praised for "his subtlety of tone and the breadth of his knowledge, from the blackest of blues to moaning R&B and clean, concise, bone-deep rock 'n' roll."

In 2004, Guitar Player listed his version of "Sweet Dreams," from his debut album on Polydor, Roy Buchanan, as having one of the "50 Greatest Tones of All Time." In the same year, the readers of Guitar Player voted Buchanan #46 in a top 50 readers' poll.

Studio albums

 * Buch and the Snakestretchers, 1971, BIOYA (homemade/self-produced/sold only at gigs)
 * Roy Buchanan, August 1972, Polydor - US #107
 * Second Album, March 1973, Polydor - US #86
 * That's What I Am Here For, November 1973, Polydor - US #152
 * In the Beginning (UK title: Rescue Me), December 1974, Polydor - US #160
 * A Street Called Straight, April 1976, Atlantic - US #148
 * Loading Zone, May 1977, Atlantic - US #105
 * You're Not Alone, April 1978, Atlantic - US #119
 * My Babe, November 1980, Waterhouse/AJK - US #193
 * When a Guitar Plays the Blues, July 1985, Alligator - US #161
 * Dancing on the Edge, June 1986, Alligator - US #153
 * Hot Wires, September 1987, Alligator

Live albums

 * Live Stock, (rec. 1974) August 1975, Polydor
 * Live in Japan, (rec. 1977) 1978, Polydor [Japan]
 * Live: Charly Blues Legend, Vol. 9, 1987, Charly
 * Live in U.S.A. & Holland, (rec. 1977–85) 1991, Silver Shadow
 * Charly Blues Masterworks: Roy Buchanan Live, 1999, Charly/Red X
 * American Axe: Live in 1974, 2003, Powerhouse
 * Live: Amazing Grace, (rec. 1974–83) 2009, Powerhouse
 * Live at Rockpalast, (rec. 1985) 2011, MIG Music
 * Live from Austin, TX (rec. 1976) 2012, New West
 * Shredding the Blues: Live at My Father's Place, (rec. 1978 & 1984) 2014, Rockbeat
 * Telemaster: Live in '75, 2017, Powerhouse
 * Live at Town Hall 1974, 2018, Real Gone Music

Compilation albums

 * The Best of Roy Buchanan, 1982, Polydor
 * The Early Years, 1989, Krazy Kat
 * Sweet Dreams: The Anthology, 1992, Polydor
 * Guitar on Fire: The Atlantic Sessions, 1993, Rhino/Atlantic
 * Malaguena, 1996, Annecillo
 * Before And After: The Last Recordings, 1999, Rollercoaster Records UK
 * Deluxe Edition: Roy Buchanan, 2001, Alligator
 * 20th Century Masters–The Millennium Collection: The Best of Roy Buchanan, 2002, Polydor
 * The Prophet: The Unreleased First Polydor Album, 2004, Hip-O Select/UMe
 * The Definitive Collection, 2006, Polydor/UMe
 * Rhino Hi-Five: Roy Buchanan, 2007, Rhino/Atlantic
 * After Hours: The Early Years, 1957–1962 Recordings, 2016, Soul Jam

title: Roy Buchanan


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Profit Impact of Market Strategy

The Profit Impact of Market Strategy  (PIMS) program is a project that uses empirical data to try to determine which business strategies make the difference between success and failure. It is used to develop strategies for resource allocation and marketing. Some of the most important strategic metrics are market share, product quality, investment intensity, and service quality (all measured by PIMS and strongly correlated with financial performance). One of the emphasized principles is that the same factors work identically across different industries.

History
The PIMS project was originally initiated by senior managers of General Electric who wanted to know why some of their business units were more profitable than others. Under the direction of Sidney Schoeffler, an Economics professor hired by GE for the purpose, the PIMS project was launched in the 1960s as an internal empirical study. The aim was to make GE's different strategic business units (SBUs) comparable.

Since GE was highly diversified at the time, key factors were sought that would have an impact on economic success regardless of the product. In particular, the return on investment (ROI), i.e. the profit per unit of tied capital, was used as the measure of success. In 1972, the project was transferred to the Marketing Sciences Institute (then under the wing of Harvard Business School, which extended it to other companies. In 1976, the American Strategic Planning Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, took charge of the project.

Between 1970 and 1983, roughly 2600 strategic business units (SBUs) from around 200 companies took part in the surveys and provided key figures for the project. Today there are around 12,570 observations for 4200 SBUs. PIMS Associates in London has been the worldwide competence and design center for PIMS since the 1990s and has been part of Malik Management (Fredmund Malik) in St. Gallen (Switzerland) since 2005.

The PIMS project analyses the data they had gathered to identify the options, problems, resources and opportunities faced by each SBU. Based on the spread of each business across different industries, it was hoped that the data could be drawn upon to provide other businesses, in the same industry, with empirical evidence of which strategies lead to increased profitability. The database continues to be updated and drawn upon by academics and companies today.

The PIMS databases currently comprise over 25,000 years of business experience at the SBU level (i.e. where the customer interface takes place and where marketing and investment decisions are made). Each SBU is characterized by hundreds of factors over a period of 3+ years, including the market share of itself and its competitors, customer preference, relative prices, service quality, innovation rate, vertical integration, etc., as well as a number of market luring factors and fairly detailed income statement, balance sheet and employee data.

Data collected
In the PIMS study, more than 50 different core metrics were regularly surveyed. The most important of these are presented below:

Characteristics of the business environment (market attractiveness):
 * (Short/long-term) market growth
 * Market size
 * Distribution channels (direct, wholesale, retail, etc.)
 * Customer characteristics (purchase amount, frequency, importance, etc.)
 * Inflation (materials and energy, labor costs, prices)
 * Position in product life cycle

Competitive strength:
 * Relative market share (compared to the 3 largest competitors)
 * Relative innovation rate and product line breadth
 * Location cost advantage
 * Relative marketing effort (salesforce, advertising, promotion)
 * Relative market coverage
 * Relative product quality
 * Characteristics of the service provision

Supply chain fitness:
 * Investment intensity (= investment volume / turnover)
 * Extent of vertical integration versus outsourcing
 * Labor productivity
 * Capacity utilization
 * Investment mix (fixed vs working capital)
 * Lean overheads
 * Marketing intensity (= marketing expenditure / sales)
 * Research and development intensity (= research and development expenses / sales)

Dynamics of change
 * Changes in competitive strengths
 * Changes in supply chain fitness

Economic success factors (as variables to be explained):
 * Return on investment (ROI) (= profit / tied capital)
 * Return on sales (ROS) (= profit / sales)
 * Real growth

While most of the variables appear obvious, PIMS has the advantage of providing empirical data that defines quantitative relationships and attributes them to what some would consider reasonable.

Participation in the PIMS study: cost and benefits
Companies wishing to use the service will provide detailed information, for each of their main strategic business units including:
 * Market and customer structure
 * Competitive strengths and weaknesses
 * Income statement and balance sheet
 * Existing market projections and business plans.

Based on the data provided, PIMS provides four reports (Lancaster, Massingham and Ashford):

 * 1) A "par" report - shows the expected profitability for this business profile – and why that differs from an average business
 * 2) A "strategic analysis" report, which calculates the predicted consequences using several alternative strategic measures. It takes into account information from companies operating in a comparable business environment and facing a similar starting point.
 * 3) A "Report on Look-Alikes" (ROLA), which aims to understand why each SBU's performance is above or below “par” by analyzing income statements and balance sheets of strategically similar businesses in more detail.
 * 4) An "Optimal Strategy" report aims to predict the best combination of strategies for the company, based on the experience of other companies in "similar" circumstances which some would consider reasonable.

Results
The following factors correlate particularly strongly with the ROI and ROS success factors:

Investment intensity correlates negatively (explains approx. 15 %):

On the one hand, this has the formal-analytical reason that with increasing investment intensity, i.e. the investment volume in relation to sales, the depreciation volume in relation to sales, the depreciation intensity, also increases and thus the profit decreases. On the other hand, if the investment intensity is high, the fixed assets increase and there is an urge to also use these capacities, i.e. to increase the output volume and under certain circumstances to lower the prices and thus the profit margin.

Relative market share correlates positively (explains approx. 12 %):

The main reason for the positive influence of the relative market share is the economies of scale: The higher the market share, the larger the production volume and the lower the unit costs; this can also be explained by the experience curve. Moreover, as the market share increases, so does the power vis-à-vis the suppliers, which means that better conditions can be achieved.

Relative product quality correlates positively (explains approx. 10 %):

Important reasons for the positive correlation are above all higher achievable prices for premium products, but also the higher willingness of consumers to buy high-quality services, so that the sales volume increases and thus positively influences the market share (see above). Another reason is the lower complaint costs.

Overall, the factors surveyed explain about 70 percent of the differences in profitability between successful and unsuccessful business areas in the PIMS database (measured as variance).

Commentary about PIMS
It can be argued that a database operating on information gathered in the period 1970–1983 is outdated. However, data continues to be collected from participating companies and PIMS argues that it provides a unique source of time-series data, the conclusions from which have proven to be very stable over time.

It has also been suggested that PIMS is too heavily biased towards traditional such as car manufacturing; this is perhaps not surprising, considering the era in which the majority of the surveys were carried out. However, as of 2006, the 3,800+ businesses contained within the database include data from the consumer, industrial and service sectors.

It is also heavily weighted towards large companies, at the expense of small entrepreneurial firms. This resulted from the data collection method used. Generally, only larger firms are prepared to pay the consulting fee, provide the survey data, and in return have access to the database in which they can compare their business with other large businesses or SBUs. Mintzberg (1998) claims that because the database is dominated by large established firms, it is more suitable as a technique for assessing the state of "being there rather than getting there". (page 99) This criticism is very important because if one is trying to get "average" results across industries to give us the "laws of the marketplace", a dubious enterprise as it is, the sampling strategy is important if one wants to obtain results that are representative.

→ ''The PIMS master database at the heart of the PIMS program now includes more than 25,000 years of business experience across a broad spectrum of industries worldwide. These are more than 90% of the companies to be processed. About one-third of them manufacture consumer goods, 15% manufacture capital goods. The remaining business units are suppliers of raw materials and semi-finished products, components or accessories for industry and commerce. Trade and services companies account for less than 10% of total companies and yet represent a fairly large sample (over 250) of strategic business units in this category. About half of the business units in the PIMS database market their products or services nationally in the United States or Canada, while 11% serve regional markets in North America. European companies are also numerous today, with around 1,000 business units from continental European countries and 600 from the UK.''

The most important criticism leveled at PIMS is the fact that causation implies correlation but correlation does not imply causation. One of the most important "findings" of the PIMS program was to find a statistically significant relationship between profitability and market share (see Buzz ell and Gale (1987)). The empirical work conducted by PIMS suggested that high market share yielded high profitability, but this correlation cannot be considered a "true" causal relationship because correlation does not imply causation. In the multivariate correlation analysis, high market share was associated with high profits, but high profits could have been associated with high market share, or a third factor common to both could have caused the correlation. Many analysts believe that it is possible to use a statistical causality test to determine causation, but if the whole problem is that correlation is insufficient to determine causation in the first place, then how can using another correlation, which is what is used in the tests, determine causation.

→ ''In connection with the market share, already indicated and frequent allegations that correlations are used in the PIMS investigations to draw conclusions about causal relationships, i.e. correlation is equated with causality. However, this problem is too obvious not to have been examined in detail during the development of the PIMS program. Backhaus et al. formulate this aptly: "The primary field of application of regression analysis is the investigation of causal relationships (cause-effect relationships), which we can also refer to as "The more the" relationships". Backhaus et al. (2006), p. 46 (Emphasis in the original.) These authors then add the following: "It should be emphasized here that neither regression analysis nor other statistical methods can prove causalities beyond doubt. Rather, regression analysis can only prove correlations between variables. This is a necessary but not yet sufficient condition for causality." Backhaus et al. (2006), p.48 f. Within the framework of the PIMS studies, it was thus possible to determine causalities with the help of time series analyses due to the availability of data over longer periods. See, for example, Barylite (1994), p. 61. Correlations in this sense, including in the PIMS program, initially give nothing other than a reason to investigate possible causalities substantiated and intensively.   Causation cannot be investigated by statistical methods. Granger causality utilizes time series methods to examine statistical causation. However, both regression analysis and granger causality rely on correlations between variables. Correlation is not sufficient to determine causation.

Another important criticism of PIMS is that it does not take into account heterogeneity in the data set. The presumption of PIMS analysis is that the same "laws of the marketplace" apply to all industries. However, the statistical assumptions employed in the econometric analysis make the assumption that all cross-sectional observations come from one statistical distribution that is the same for all cross-sectional observations. This tends to be the Achilles heel of virtually all cross-sectional analyses. If this homogeneous assumption is false, then cross-sectional observations are being drawn from different populations. While one can use estimation techniques such as fixed-effects to control for different population means, co-variances can also differ across populations (meaning behavior differs across populations) and the only way one can control for this aspect is to run regressions on each population separately. This means that the "laws of the marketplace" differ across populations, directly contradicting one of the main presumptions of using the PIMS data base for analysis.

Telis and Golder (1996) claim that PIMS defines markets too narrowly. Respondents described their market very narrowly to give the appearance of high market share. They believe that this self reporting bias makes the conclusions suspect. They are also concerned that no defunct companies were included, leading to "survivor bias".

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Profit Impact of Market Strategy


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Berenson

Berenson is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:

 * Alex Berenson, American writer and journalist
 * Bernard Berenson, American art historian
 * Berry Berenson, American model, actress, and photographer
 * Gordon "Red" Berenson, Canadian ice hockey player and coach
 * Lori Berenson, American jailed in Peru for terrorism related crimes
 * Marisa Berenson, American actress and model
 * Senda Berenson Abbott, American basketball player

Fictional characters:

 * Jake Berenson, character in the Animorphs series
 * Saul Berenson, character in the American political thriller TV series Homeland

title: Berenson


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Royal Flying Doctor Service

The Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS), commonly known as the Flying Doctor, is an air medical service in Australia. It is a non-profit organisation that provides emergency and primary health care services for those living in rural, remote and regional areas of Australia who cannot access a hospital or general practice due to the vast distances of the Outback.

"Mantle of safety"
The Reverend John Flynn had worked in rural and remote areas of Victoria and was commissioned by the Presbyterian Church to look at the needs of people living in the outback. His report to the Presbyterian Assembly in 1912 resulted in the establishment of the Australian Inland Mission (AIM), of which he was appointed Superintendent. In 1928, he formed the AIM Aerial Medical Service, a one-year experiment based in Cloncurry, Queensland. This experiment later became The Royal Flying Doctor Service.

Flynn's missionary work involved the establishment of hospitals in bush communities, but this did not help those who lived far from any major community. In his public speaking he would often retell the tragic circumstances that had befallen several bush settlers. The fate of Jimmy Darcy, in 1917, was one of these stories.
 * Darcy was a stockman at Ruby Plains, a remote cattle station in Western Australia. After being found injured with a ruptured bladder by some friends, he was transported over 30 miles (12 hours), to the nearest town, Halls Creek. Here, Darcy was met by FW Tuckett, the Postmaster, and the only man in the settlement trained in first aid. Tuckett said there was nothing he could reliably do for injuries so serious, and tried unsuccessfully to contact doctors at Wyndham, and then Derby, by telegraph. He eventually got through to a doctor in Perth. Through communication by morse code, Dr. Holland guided Tuckett through two rather messy bladder operations using the only sharp instrument available, a pen knife. Due to the total absence of any medical facilities, Darcy had been operated on strapped to the Post Office counter, having first been made insensible with whisky. Holland then travelled 10 days to Halls Creek on a boat for cattle transport, a Model T Ford, a horse-drawn carriage, and even on foot, only to find that Darcy had died the day before. The operations had been successful, but the stockman had died from an undiagnosed case of malaria and a ruptured abscess in his appendix.

It was from stories such as this that Flynn, and his following at the AIM, became inspired to develop a route of communications that could solve the problem of remoteness, but no feasible technology seemed apparent.

Flight and radio: the fusion of two fledgling technologies
Victorian pilot Lieutenant (John) Clifford Peel had heard Flynn's public speeches, and on being shipped out to France for World War I in 1917, sent Flynn a letter explaining how he had seen a missionary doctor visiting isolated patients using a plane. Assisted by costing estimates by Peel, Flynn immediately took the idea of using aircraft to begin his idea, and published Peel's idea in the church's newsletter. Peel died in combat in September 1918, probably not even knowing the impact he had in the creation of an Australian icon.

Along with motorised flight, another new technology was being developed that could replace the complicated means of communication by telegraph. Together with Alfred Traeger, Flynn began experiments with radio in the mid-1920s to enable remote outposts to contact a centralised medical base. The pedal radio was the first result of this collaboration. These were distributed gradually to stations, missions and other human residences around Cloncurry, the base site for a 50-watt transmitter.

Experimental aerial medical services commenced in 1926 and an injured miner was transported by air from Mount Isa to Cloncurry in November 1927.

By 1928, Flynn had gathered sufficient funds through fundraising activities to launch the experiment of the AMS on 15 May. Its supporters included industrialist HV McKay, medical doctor George Simpson and Hudson Fysh, one of the founders of Qantas. Qantas supplied the first aircraft to the fledgling organisation, VH-UER a De Havilland DH.50, dubbed "Victory". On 17 May 1928, two days after inception, the service's first official flight piloted by Arthur Affleck departed from Cloncurry, 85 miles to Julia Creek in Central Queensland, where the plane was met by over 100 people at the airstrip. Qantas charged two shillings per mile for use of the Victory during the first year of the project.

Continued success
Within the first year of operations, the service flew approximately 20,000 miles in 50 flights, becoming the first comprehensive air ambulance service in the world. The service persisted through difficult first years, dealing with postwar Australia and the Great Depression of the 1930s. During its first few decades the service relied heavily on community fundraising, volunteer support and donations. Nowadays, the service is supported by the Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments, but still relies heavily on fundraising and donations from the community to purchase and medically equip its aircraft, and to finance other major capital initiatives. Until the 1960s the service predominantly hired aircraft, pilots and service technicians from contractors. After this point, the service moved on to purchasing its own equipment and employing its own pilots and mechanics.

In 1932, the success from its operations in Cloncurry, and the increasing public awareness to this vital rural service, resulted in a push for a national network of flying doctors, hopefully with sponsorship from the government. In 1934 this was realised with the new Australian Aerial Medical Service opening up "Sections" across the nation. Bases were set up in Wyndham, Port Hedland, Kalgoorlie, Broken Hill, Alice Springs and Meekatharra. The Queensland experiment was expanded with two additional bases opening in Charters Towers and Charleville. An official Federal Council for the organisation was formed in 1936. In 1937, Dr Jean White became the first female flying doctor in Australia, and the world, when she started work at Normanton. In 1942 the service was again renamed as the Flying Doctor Service, with Royal being bestowed upon the service in 1955. On 22 October 1958, Holden car manufacturers donated its 500,000th vehicle to the service in Melbourne.

Sister Myra Blanch was one of the first nurses, known as "Flying Sisters", to join the service. She was key in the New South Wales Section operations during the 1940s and 50s, even though Flying Nurses didn't actually become regular until the 1960s. Many patient transports are conducted with an RFDS nurse and pilot only on board. Nurses have been responsible for many innovations to the service, including an addition to the RFDS medical chest to incorporate a "body chart" (1951). The chart was an anatomical representation of a human being, with areas clearly numbered. With such a chart, a remote doctor can ask the patient "where is the pain felt?" and receive a comprehensible reply. The medicines contained in the chest are similarly numbered for ease in communicating medical instructions.

The service is still heavily reliant on community support for funding, particularly through events such as the Simpson Desert Bike Challenge, and is well respected across the country as an organisation that has contributed much to rural, regional and remote communities.

Its services include:

 * Emergency – primary aeromedical response to accident or illness
 * Emergency – secondary aeromedical evacuation and medical retrieval services
 * Non-Emergency Transport - by aeromedical and road ambulances
 * Telehealth – 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, medical consultation services by radio, telephone or video call
 * Primary health care clinics – the transportation of a general practitioner for regular clinical visits to remote areas (often a circuit visiting several communities and/or stations). Clinics include general practice, nursing services, child and maternal health, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, Rural Women's GP Service, mental health, dental services, allied health and medical specialists.
 * Consultation, communication, and support for rural and remote doctors across Australia
 * Inter-hospital transfer of patients
 * Education and training opportunities and midwifery scholarships

The service also uses not just aircraft but also four-wheel drives and other utility land vehicles to aid in transportation and communications.

Organisation
The RFDS is made up of seven legal entities – RFDS of Australia, Central Operations, Queensland Section, South Eastern Section, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Operations. The RFDS operates in a federated structure and each of the seven entities has its own Board and Management. Each entity operates independently, both financially and operationally.

The Flying Doctor operates from numerous bases, health services and other facilities (including marketing, fundraising and public relations as well as the national office) across Australia.

RFDS bases are operated by: Bases at Carnarvon, Geraldton, Derby, and Wyndham have closed, while the original base at Cloncurry was moved to Mount Isa in 1965 and the early base at Charters Towers moved to Cairns in 1972. The most recent new base was opened in Broome in 2016.
 * Central Operations – with bases at Adelaide Airport, Alice Springs Airport and Port Augusta Airport, and health services at Andamooka, Marla and Marree.
 * South Eastern Section – Broken Hill, New South Wales; Dubbo, New South Wales; Launceston, Tasmania; Essendon Airport; and Sydney Airport and Bankstown Airport in Sydney.
 * Victoria Operations - bases across the state, including Essendon Airport; and a fleet of more than 100 road ambulances operating from more than 20 rural and regional bases. The Victorian Section office is in Richmond, an inner eastern suburb of Melbourne.
 * Queensland Section – Brisbane Airport, Bundaberg Airport, Cairns Airport, Roma Airport, Charleville, Longreach, Mount Isa, Rockhampton and Townsville Airport
 * Western Operations – Broome, Kalgoorlie, Meekatharra, Perth's Jandakot Airport,and Port Hedland. The Rio Tinto LifeFlight Pilatus PC-24 jets are located in Broome and Jandakot.

Aircraft
The first aircraft operated by the "Aerial Medical Service" in 1928 was a de Havilland DH.50 hired from the fledgling Qantas. It was replaced in 1934 by a DH.83 Fox Moth.

During the 1930s and 1940s the fleet consisted of a mix of de Havilland DH.50s, DH.83 Fox Moths, DH.84 Dragons, DH.104 Doves and the de Havilland Australia DHA-3 Drover.

From the 1950s to 1970s, the fleet included the Beechcraft Baron, Beechcraft Travel Air, Beechcraft Queen Air, Beechcraft Duke, Cessna 180, Cessna 182, Cessna 421, Piper Cherokee and Piper PA-31 Navajo.

Aircraft were provided by contractors until the 1960s. Subsequently, the RFDS owned its own aircraft and employed its own pilots and engineers.

In the 1970s and 1980s the RFDS base at Broken Hill operated the Australian-made GAF Nomad.

From the 1980s to the 2000s, the fleet included the Cessna 404 and Cessna 441.

For a time in the mid-2000s the aeromedical evacuation aircraft used were either the Pilatus PC-12 or the Beechcraft King Air 200 series. The internal configuration of these two aircraft varies in the different RFDS sections. Typically they are configured with two rear-facing seats which look onto two stretchers. In some aircraft, one stretcher can be removed quickly and two seats slipped into place instead.

The PC-12, PC-24 and King Air are pressurised and so can safely transport patients who would not otherwise tolerate the decreased air pressure in a in non-pressurised aircraft. The internal cabin pressure can be maintained throughout the flight at that of sea level. This is important for patients critically sensitive to pressure changes. Also, pressurised aircraft can fly at high enough altitude to be above turbulent weather. This is of great benefit in providing an environment safe for the patient and staff, and also limits complications of aeromedical transport such as motion sickness and exacerbation of injuries such as unstable fractures.

In October 2009 the standardisation on the two aircraft types ended when two Cessna 208B Grand Caravans and a Hawker 800XP joined the fleet. The South Eastern Section operates 18 King Airs (B200, B200C, B300C); The Queensland Section operates 20 King Airs (B200, B200C, B300C) and 3 PC-12s; The Western Operations operates 16 PC-12s and 3 PC-24; and Central Operations operates 19 PC-12 and 2 PC-24. By 2021, the RFDS had received their 4 Pilatus PC-24 jets, replacing their Hawker 800XP jet. They are based at Jandakot Airport and Broome in WA and Adelaide SA. The PC-24 can fit 3 stretcher beds and two seated patients. The aircraft can cruise at 45000 ft and halves the time of flight compared to the existing propeller driven fleet. The PC-24 can also operate out of paved and unpaved runways.

In 2022, The Western Operations started operating its own helicopters. Two Airbus EC145 were imported from Germany and reconfigured at Jandakot Airport into hospital retrieval platforms. The aircraft are operated single pilot IFR with NVIS (NVG). The service provides retrievals up to 200 km from Perth, landing in sports ovals or helipads. Patients are then flown directly to rooftop helipads located on all the major hospitals in Perth.

Medical retrieval equipment
The RFDS uses a wide range of contemporary emergency medical equipment to provide aeromedical retrieval services. These include transport ventilators, critical care monitors, infusion devices, point-of-care testing, portable diagnostic ultrasound and a range of other splints and devices.

Statistics

According to the RFDS of Australia 2015/16 Annual Report the service owns 67 aircraft, and operates 23 bases with 1,225 employees. Each day, on average, the service:
 * travels 73,554 kilometres by air
 * performs 211 landings
 * has 800 patient contacts (includes patients at clinics, patient transports and telehealth)
 * transports 177 patients (includes primary evacuations, inter-hospital transfer, transports from clinics, repatriations and road transports by Victoria Mobile Patient Care Service)
 * conducts 254 telehealth sessions.

School of the Air
The School of the Air, which links outback students with centralised teachers, until recently used the same radio equipment as the RFDS. This has been superseded with the availability of internet services.

Notable people
Notable people associated with the RFDS include:

 * Arthur Affleck, first pilot/doctor
 * Marie Bashir, former NSW Governor, official patron
 * Clyde Fenton, first doctor in the Northern Territory, also a pilot
 * John Flynn, founder
 * Wylie Gibbs, doctor
 * Macarthur Job, pilot
 * Robin Miller, nurse/pilot, "The Sugarbird Lady"
 * John Grieve Woods, doctor

Cultural references

 * The RFDS was the subject of the TV drama series The Flying Doctors. The series followed the lives of an RFDS crew based in a fictional township called "Coopers Crossing" (set in the real-life town of Minyip in north-western rural Victoria) and the members of the local population that they served.
 * RFDS: Royal Flying Doctor Service is an Australian drama television series which centres around the lives of workers for the Royal Flying Doctors Service. It commenced airing on the Seven Network in 2021.
 * In the 1950s the RFDS featured in a BBC Radio series The Flying Doctor, which became well known for the catchphrase "Flying Doctor calling Wollumboola Base". A television show of the same title based on this radio series and starring Richard Denning ran on the British ITV network for one season (1959–60).
 * At the closing of Charlie Drake's humorous song "My Boomerang Won't Come Back", it is implied that the narrator accidentally downs a Flying Doctor plane with his boomerang.
 * The Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia is featured in the outback map of the video game Flight Control.
 * The British space rock group Hawklords released a song called "Flying Doctor" on their album 25 Years On (1978). It describes an Australian flying doctor who has a drug cabinet key.
 * In the television series Thomas & Friends, Season 22 introduces Isla, a plane in service to the RFDS, who is good friends with Shane, the Australian engine Thomas first met back in the special Thomas & Friends: The Great Race. The episode "Cyclone Thomas" has Isla shown flying to various medical emergencies with her on-board doctor, Dr. Claire, and attempting to help evacuate residents from a town threatened by a hurricane.
 * Air Hawk and the Flying Doctors was a long-running cartoon that featured the service.

Heritage listings
The First and Second Australian Inland Mission Hospitals in Birdsville are listed on the Queensland Heritage Register.

In 2009 as part of the Q150 celebrations, the Royal Flying Doctor Service was announced as one of the Q150 Icons of Queensland for its role as an iconic "innovation and invention".

In 2011 the Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia (Queensland Section) was inducted into the Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame in recognition of its contribution to rural health and rural community building in Australia.

title: Royal Flying Doctor Service


text:
Travel Air

The Travel Air Manufacturing Company was an aircraft manufacturer established in Wichita, Kansas, United States in January 1925 by Clyde Cessna, Walter Beech, and Lloyd Stearman.

An early leader in single-engine, light-aircraft manufacturing, from 1925 to 1931, Travel Air was the largest-volume aircraft manufacturer in the United States in 1928 -- the principal contributor to Wichita becoming named the "Air Capital City" by the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce.

Travel Air produced the trend-setting Travel Air Mystery Ship racer, which forced radical changes in U.S. military aircraft. Travel Air also developed early small airliners, including Delta Airlines' first, and the first civilian plane to reach Hawaii by air.

With Walter Beech as its last President, the company was acquired by Curtiss-Wright Corporation, and moved to St. Louis, Missouri, before production ceased in the Great Depression. However, Beech returned to Wichita in 1932, acquired the abandoned Travel Air factory, and resumed production under his own name, with the Beech Aircraft Corporation — producing what would have been the 17th Travel Air model, but as the Beech Model 17 "Staggerwing."

Early biplanes

The company initially built a series of sporting and training open-cockpit biplanes, including the Model A, Model B, Model BH, and Model BW (These were subsequently renumbered.) Other types included the 5000 and 6000 high wing cabin monoplanes and the CW / 7000 mailplane.

The A differed in some minor details such as lacking the overhanging Fokker style ailerons that gave the rest of the series the nickname Wichita Fokker (not present on all of the later models though), while the B, BH and BW differed only in the engine installed – the A and B had a Curtiss OX-5, the BH had a Hispano-Suiza V-8, the BW had a Wright radial (of various types) though other radials would be installed later (especially after it became the 4000).

Aside from the Wichita Fokkers seen in such movies as Howard Hughes' Hell's Angels, likely the most famous of the open cockpit biplanes was N434N, a D4D (the ultimate derivative of the BW) painted in Pepsi colors for airshow and skywriting use which survives in the National Air & Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy annex. A second, backup D4D, N434P, used by Pepsi in later years to supplement and fill-in for the original aircraft, is housed in the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos, California.

Cabin monoplanes
The Travel Air 5000 was a Cessna design, ordered in small numbers for National Air Transport. Two were custom-built long-range endurance aircraft similar in concept to Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis. Woolaroc, flown by Art Gobel won the disastrous Dole Air Race from Oakland, California to Hawaii in which the majority of contestants disappeared at sea or otherwise died attempting the crossing.

Travel Air then produced the Model 6000, a five or six-seat high-wing cabin monoplane — intended for airline use, and for very wealthy private owners.

A small fleet of Travel Air 6000s were the first airliners for Delta Air Service (eventually renamed Delta Airlines). In 1928, National Air Transport operated the Type 6000 on their mail and passenger routes from Chicago to Dallas, Kansas City and New York.

Two Travel Air 6000 were purchased by the Paraguayan government during the Chaco War (1932–1935) for the Transport Squadron of its Air Arm. These planes belonged to TAT with the registrations NC624K (c/n 6B-2011) and NC9815 (c/n 6B-1029); They received the military serials T-2 and T-5 (later reserialled as T-9). The planes were intensively used during the conflict as air ambulances. They both survived the war and continued flying in the air arm. In 1945, they were transferred to the first Paraguayan airline, Líneas Aéreas de Transporte Nacional (LATN) and received the civil registrations ZP-SEC and ZP-SED. They were withdrawn from use in 1947.

Cabin biplanes
The CH or 7000 — a single-engine, cabin biplane, with a pilot's open-cockpit above and behind the small, enclosed cabin for cargo or passengers — found little success, but ended up in Alaska as an early bushplane.

Racing monoplanes
Travel Air was also responsible for a series of very successful racing aircraft, which due to the company being extremely secretive about them during development, were named Mystery Ships by the press. In 1929, at the National Air Races in Cleveland, the first Travel Air Model R Mystery Ship became the first American airplane to outrun the nation's top fighter aircraft, winning the Thompson Trophy unlimited-class pylon race. The Mystery Ships dominated the racing circuit for several years and had the distinction of being faster than anything the U.S. military had on strength. It forced the U.S. military to face the need to give up biplane fighters and water-cooled engines.

Its renown led to one example being sold to the Italians which inspired the design of a racing aircraft and the Breda Ba.27 fighter.

Acquisition by Curtiss-Wright
Travel Air merged with the Curtiss-Wright Corporation in August 1929. Curtiss-Wright continued to manufacture some of the Travel Air designs though they were renumbered again so that the 4000 became the 4, the 6000 became the 6. Additional types that had been close to production number from 8 to 16 were built while under Curtiss-Wright management such as the Curtiss-Wright CW-12. which in various marks was sold to several South American countries.

Travel Air Founder (with Clyde Cessna and Lloyd Stearman) Walter Beech resigned from the Curtis-Wright Corporation in March 1932 to form Beech Aircraft Company in Wichita,Ks.

Powder Puff Derby
In August 1929, the first Women's Air Derby was held. Of the 20 entrants in the Women's Air Derby, otherwise known as "the Powder Puff Derby", seven flew Travel Airs and it was Louise Thaden who won the Santa Monica, Calif., to Cleveland race. Opal Kunz finished eighth. The other five Travel Airs were flown by Pancho Barnes, Claire Fahy, Marvel Crosson, Mary von Mack, and Blanche Noyes.

One of the odd qualifications was that the aircraft would have to have horsepower “appropriate for a woman.” Opal Kunz was told her airplane was too fast for a woman to handle, and had to get another aircraft or stay out of the race. “…Though Opal Kunz owned and flew her own 300 horse power Travel Air, it was disallowed since it was deemed by the judges to be “too fast for a woman to fly.” With US$25,000.00 in prize money at stake, she bought a lower powered Travel Air to race with.”

title: Travel Air


text:
Copper (color)

Copper is a reddish brown color that resembles the metal copper.

The first recorded use of copper as a color name in English was in 1594.

Pale copper
At right is displayed pale tone of copper that is called copper in Crayola crayons. This color was formulated by Crayola in 1903.

Copper red
At right is displayed the color copper red.

The first recorded use of copper red as a color name in English was in 1590.

Copper penny
At right is displayed the color copper penny. Copper penny is one of the colors in the special set of metallic Crayola crayons called Silver Swirls, the colors of which were formulated by Crayola in 1990.

Copper rose
At right is displayed the color copper rose.

The first recorded use of copper rose as a color name in English was in 1928.

Copper in nature

 * Plants
 * Restrepia elegans.jpg Copper-colored Restrepia is an orchid native to Colombia.

 * Snakes
 * Southern copperhead.jpg]]Copperhead snakes (such as Trigonocephalus contortrix) are so named for the coloration found between their eyes.

Ethnography

 * Indigenous peoples of the Americas are sometimes described as being copper colored or copper-skinned.

Heraldry

 * Copper (heraldry) – Copper has been used in heraldry as a metal tincture since the late 20th Century, so far mostly in Canada.

Sports

 * The Zambia national football team are nicknamed the Chipolopolo, which translates to "Copper Bullets" and typically features the color in its uniforms.

title: Copper (color)


text:
Model Engineering College

Model Engineering College or MEC is a government cost-sharing technical institute and research centre in Thrikkakara, Kochi, Kerala, India. It was established by the Institute of Human Resources Development (IHRD), an autonomous agency under the Government of Kerala, in 1989. It is affiliated to the APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University (KTU) since 2015.

MEC was previously affiliated to the Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT) until 2015. 'Excel' is the annual national techno-managerial festival conducted by MEC since 2001 under the motto "Inspire, Innovate, Engineer".

All B.Tech programs offered by the institute are accredited by the National Board of Accreditation (NBA).

History
MEC was established in 1989 by the Institute of Human Resources Development (IHRD), an autonomous technical educational research institute established by the Government of Kerala in 1987. MEC was the first institute in Kerala to be affiliated to the Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT). The institute shifted into its current campus in 1994. It is affiliated to the APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University (KTU) since 2015.

Facilities

 * Additional Skill Acquisition Programme (ASAP) Kerala Delivery Platform
 * Amphitheatre
 * Basketball ground
 * Cafeteria
 * Central Computing Centre
 * Central Library
 * College Buses
 * Counselling Facility
 * Football ground
 * Gymnasium
 * Laboratories and Workshops
 * Main Auditorium
 * Mens Hostel
 * Open air theatre
 * Placement Cell
 * State Bank of India ATM
 * University Research Centre
 * Wi-Fi

Governance
The Board of Governors (BoG) of MEC is constituted by the Institute of Human Resources Development. It includes educationalists, industrialists, representatives from All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), University Grants Commission (UGC), Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University (KTU), a state government nominee from its department of higher education, the college principal, and some faculty members.

Departments
The institute has six departments. They are:
 * Department of Computer engineering
 * Department of Electronics and Communication engineering
 * Department of Electrical and Electronics engineering
 * Department of Electronics and Biomedical engineering
 * Department of Mechanical engineering
 * Department of Applied Sciences

Undergraduate programs
MEC offers four-year long undergraduate academic degrees with a sanctioned annual intake of 600 students in the following seven streams:

 * Computer engineering: 180 seats
 * Electronics and communication engineering: 120 seats
 * Computer engineering (Business systems): 60 seats
 * Electronics engineering (VLSI Design and Technology): 60 seats
 * Electrical and electronics engineering: 60 seats
 * Electronics and biomedical engineering: 60 seats
 * Mechanical engineering: 60 seats.

Students who successfully complete these academic programs from the institute will receive a Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) degree issued by the KTU at the end.

All B.Tech courses offered by the institute are accredited by the National Board of Accreditation (NBA).

Graduate programs
The institute also offers two-year long postgraduate academic degrees with a sanctioned annual intake of 78 students in the following four specialisations:

 * VLSI design and embedded systems: 24 seats
 * Data science: 18 seats
 * Energy management: 18 seats
 * Signal processing: 18 seats

Students who successfully complete these academic programs from the institute will receive a Master of Technology (M.Tech) degree issued by the KTU at the end.

Admission
The admission procedure and the fee structure for the academic programmes offered by the institute are decided by APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University (KTU) and Institute of Human Resources Development (IHRD) respectively.

Admissions to the undergraduate programs are based on the ranklist prepared after the performance of applicants in the KEAM Entrance Test conducted by the Commissioner of Entrance Examinations (CEE), Kerala. 15% of total seats to the programs offered by the institute are reserved for Non-Resident Indians (NRIs).

Admissions to postgraduate programs offered by institute are based on the ranklist of Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) conducted by Indian Institutes of Technologies (IITs). The vacant seats are filled based on nativity, percentage of marks obtained, and reservation criteria of the students.

Research
MEC was the first engineering college in Kerala to be recognised by Cochin University of Science and Technology as the research centre of university in the branch of Electronics and communication engineering in the year 2010. The research areas in 2010 included Digital image processing, Signal processing, and Optical communication.

Later, the APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University (KTU) extended the research into various specialisations including Microwave engineering, Biomedical Signal and Image Processing, VLSI and Embedded systems, Reliability engineering, etc.

In September 2022, the APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University (KTU) decided to establish a Centre of Excellence (CoE) at MEC for advanced learning and research in the following fields of Computer engineering with industrial linkages: The university research centre will come up at a space of around 60,000 sq.ft in the institute.
 * Artificial intelligence (AI)
 * Machine learning (ML)
 * Robotics
 * Automation

Traditions and student activities
The foremost student body of the institute is the Senate, which consists of elected representatives from each stream. The institute has several students bodies, of both technical and non-technical nature.

Technical bodies
These include the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Cell (IEDC MEC), which is a fully functioning student body registered under the Technology Business Incubator of MEC. The cell provides a platform for students to work on their ideas and take it further. IEEE student's branch, Electronics Association (Mixed Signals), the Electrical Minds Forum (EMF), the MEC Association of Computer Students (MACS), the Biomedical Association (BMA), the Model Amateur Radio Association (MARC), the FOSS MEC, the IETE Students Branch, the TEDx MEC, the Topgear MEC (mechanical association), and a robotics Club named Cyborg are some of the other student technical bodies in the institute.

There are multiple tech community and club branches in MEC which are highly active in supporting the students gain knowledge in core technical and related subjects. They include:
 * Hack Club MEC: MEC branch of the international community 'Hack Club'.
 * DSC MEC: MEC branch of Developer Students Club (Google).
 * Tinkerhub MEC: MEC branch of Tinkerhub Kerala.

Non-technical bodies
These include the Illuminati (quizzing fraternity), the Debate Club, the Music Club, the Bhoomitrasena (environmental club), and the National Service Scheme chapter among many others.

Excel
Excel is the annual national techno-managerial festival conducted by MEC under the motto "Inspire, Innovate, Engineer". The event is held over a period of three days and is conducted in association with the IEEE Student Branch of the college. The festival has been held every year since its inception in 2001. It has been held as an All India Annual Technical Fest since its beginning in 2001.

Technopreneur
It is the annual national level entrepreneurial and managerial symposium of MEC and the flagship event of IEDC MEC. The first edition of Technopreneur, Technopreneur 2006, went on to win the Best Yi-Net event at the CII National Summit in Mumbai. The 13th edition of Technopreneur will be held in March 2023. The symposium attracts over 2000 participants across the nation.

Arts and sports
Arts and sports festivals are conducted every year by the college senate. The College Senate divides students into 4 houses, each with a captain and a co-captain. The houses compete with each other for the Arts, Sports and Overall trophies across multiple events. Houses are formed exclusively for the arts and sports competitions and are dissolved soon after. There is a College inauguration ceremony. Arts and Sports festivals are conducted annually in the even semesters. The Arts festival of the university is named Sargam which was later changed to Layatharang. Chakravyuh is the name given to the annual sports meet. MEC was the overall champion of CUSAT inter-college arts fest SARGAM-2013 consecutively for the third time.

Placements
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, MEC graduates of 2019-20 batch got nearly 100% placements in 2020. Almost all of the 360 students who graduated from the institute in 2020 got recruited by over 80 companies during the campus placement drive conducted by MEC. The multinational corporations who recruited graduates from the campus in 2020 include Amazon, Microsoft, Robert Bosch GmbH, LinkedIn, ServiceNow, Amadeus IT Group, Deloitte, Synopsys, FactSet, Cypress Semiconductor, Oracle Corporation, and redBus. The highest pay package was around ₹30 lakh per annum during the pandemic year. The median pay package was ₹6.6 lakh per annum for product companies and ₹4.5 lakh per annum for service-based companies.

Alumni
xMEC is the official alumni network of MEC.

title: Model Engineering College


text:
Talk:Royal Flying Doctor Service

Rather than describing this as "an airborne medical service", I would like to call it what it is: an air ambulance. I haven't though because that page redirects to MEDEVAC, which deals only with military uses. T.P.K. 14:16, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Maybe cut the redirect and write a stub explaining that? Ambi 15:03, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Stubed up. T.P.K. 08:40, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Two Articles and bits
(I'll levae these up for a month/all incorporation, and then remove, for fear of copyvio)

From Chronicles of the 20th Century (see User:ZayZayEM/Sources)

Flying Doctors wing across the outback
 * March 26, 1934 — The Flying Doctor service will be expanded from Queensland into Western Australia. The scheme will embrace the proposed medical aerial service at Port hedland, and other points will be covered later. The Commonwealth Government hopes to expand the service into Victoria, NSW and South Australia within the next few years. The service, begun in 1928 by the Australian Inland mission of teh Presbytarian Church. ,ade its first flight to Julia Creek, in central Queensland. A 50-watt transmitter was set up in teh vestry of the Cloncurry Presbytarian church, and pedal wirelesses were gradually ditributed to (cattle? -ZZ) stations and missions within transmitting distance of the base. In its first year the service flew 20,000 miles in 50 flights.

The inland Flynn's final resting place
 * May 23, 1951 &mdash In the shadows of Mt. Gillen, four miles from Alice Springs, John Flynn of the inland has been laid to rest. He died in Sydney 18 days ago (May 5 -ZZ). It was his wish that he be buried in the heart of the outback, to which he devoted the greater part of his life. In 1912 the Presbyterian Church sent Flynn to report on the conditions in the Northern Territory, and from that year he worked to improve people's lives there. Combining the spiritual with the practical, his Inland Mission established a system of "patrol padres", a radio network and, from 1928, the Flying Doctor Service, all of which have flourished.

Also:
 * on the October 22, 1958, in Melbourne the RFDSA is given the 500,000th Holden (car/landvehicle?? -ZZ)
 * November 9, 1968 in Central Australia, RFDSA amkes its 4000th flight, patient is a 3 y.o. Michelle Smith.

--ZayZayEM 12:46, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Okay - I just hocked a lot of info from the website. And redid a lot of organisation. All the cool articles have snazzy section titles, but if you have soemthing better run it. Also I apologise for any typos and lack of wikilinks.--ZayZayEM 14:12, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Robin Miller Dicks
1940-1975 a memorial at Jandakot airport is dedicated to her for the work she did with poliomylitis vaccinations. If can anyone expand on her life please add information to the Jandakot Airport discussion page thanks Gnangarra 17:13, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

RFDS in Fiction
Might be worth mentioning how the RFDS has turned up in a fair bit of Australian (pop-)culture. Two come to mind imediately, the RFDS TV soap (of which I'm surprised there's no wikipage set up already!) and the Flying Doc in Snake Tails comics. Anyone wanna have a go at it? I'm sure there is more to mention. Ghost 15:15, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Trivia section
I think that the Trivia section on this page should be moved to the article regarding Holden. Alexdan loghin 08:50, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

funding
The article claims that donations are still the mainstay of funding, but then later says that donations accounted for ~$2million of a total budget of $31million (rest from gov't). Inconsistent... are the numbers correct? Sewebster 23:09, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Flynn
The first sentence of the second par says: "Victorian Lieutenant Clifford Peel, had heard Flynn's public speeches..." This is the first time Flynn is mentioned in the article. There doesn't appear to be a wiki-page for Flynn. Can somebody who knows the history flesh this out properly? There's some good info here: http://www.flyingdoctor.net/Birth-of-an-Idea.html  Paul Fisher (talk) 09:59, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Poem in Trivia?
Les Murray wrote a poem called Morse about the events in Hall's Creek. I know of no recognition of the link between the poem and the event, but the final stanza (which follows the prediction of a recovery thanks to the successful surgery) seems to indicate the advent of more effective communications and travel with the line "morse keys have mostly gone silent." Is this worth mentioning? For those that are interested, a copy of the poem is located here--Mr Bucket (talk) 07:16, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Fair use candidate from Commons: File:AUS$20 John Flynn.jpg
The file File:AUS$20 John Flynn.jpg, used on this page, has been deleted from Wikimedia Commons and re-uploaded at File:AUS$20 John Flynn.jpg. It should be reviewed to determine if it is compliant with this project's non-free content policy, or else should be deleted and removed from this page. Commons fair use upload bot (talk) 00:46, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Balance
This article seems to be ripped directly from a promotional pamphlet, such is the way it is written. I know this is an important non-profit, but it seems a little too 'spruiky'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 110.142.171.86 (talk) 02:51, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 4 external links on Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130206203520/http://yourhealth.flyingdoctor.org.au/health-services/ to http://yourhealth.flyingdoctor.org.au/health-services/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130211050411/http://healthprofessionals.flyingdoctor.org.au/education--training/ to http://healthprofessionals.flyingdoctor.org.au/education--training/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130129035918/http://www.flyingdoctor.org.au/Aviation/Aviation-History-and-Early-Aircraft/ to http://www.flyingdoctor.org.au/Aviation/Aviation-History-and-Early-Aircraft/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110216120452/http://www.flyingdoctor.org.au/Rio-Tinto-Life-Flight-.html to http://www.flyingdoctor.org.au/Rio-Tinto-Life-Flight-.html

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Hansard ref
Thanks Kerry for adding the URL to the Hansard ref (I did have the right file after all, but it turns out that my screen reader wasn't coping well with the PDF; converting it to text fixed that problem). However, I'm still not happy with its use on the Wikipedia article. It's not a reliable source in Wikipedia terms because it's just a transcript of a parliamentary session that by definition hasn't been subject to any fact-checking or editorial oversight, unlike more regular sources for Wikipedia such as newspapers/magazines, journal articles, or books by respected scholars. As hansard is a transcript of parliament that will publish almost verbatim anything said there, it effectively acts as a self-published source, and these are used under very strict conditions on Wikipedia. I can't find anything in Frances Bedford's Wikipedia article or her parliamentary profile to indicate that she is in any way a recognised authority on anything related to Jean White (e.g. Australian medical history, women's history, etc.), and referencing her in this way implies that she has that authority. I appreciate that the reference was added in good faith as background reading, but that's not what references are for, especially when the statement in question is already referenced to a newspaper article, as it is in this case. Therefore, I'm going to remove the reference again. Graham 87 15:29, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 9 January 2022

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: page moved. Andrewa (talk) 09:19, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia → Royal Flying Doctor Service – WP:COMMONNAME, no other Royal Flying Doctor Service that article is going to be confused with Reflects how the organisation sees itself. Bortoporte (talk) 01:07, 9 January 2022 (UTC) The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Support per nom.--Ortizesp (talk) 23:35, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Royal Flying Doctor Service


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Karin Anna Cheung

Karin Anna Cheung (born November 2, 1974) is an American actress, singer, songwriter, and artist.

Early life and education
In 1998, Cheung graduated from California State University, Northridge, with a degree in art.

Career
Cheung's first audition for feature films landed her the female lead role as Stephanie Vandergosh in Better Luck Tomorrow (2002) directed by Justin Lin. She also plays the lead, Angela, in Quentin Lee's feature film The People I've Slept With (2009). In 2012, Cheung voice acted as the lead role of Kaz Suyeishi in the animated short film Hibakusha, directed by Steve Nguyen and Choz Belen. Cheung also appeared in Quentin Lee's horror film, The Unbidden, alongside Michelle Krusiec, Tamlyn Tomita and Julia Nickson-Soul.

On January 20, 2009, Cheung performed at Barack Obama's inauguration as president.

title: Karin Anna Cheung


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Heinz Reinefarth

Heinz Reinefarth (26 December 1903 – 7 May 1979) was a German SS commander during World War II and government official in West Germany after the war. During the Warsaw Uprising of August 1944 his troops committed numerous atrocities. After the war, Reinefarth became the mayor of the town of Westerland, on the isle of Sylt, and member of the Schleswig-Holstein Landtag. Polish demands for extradition were never accepted, and Reinefarth was never convicted of any war crime.

Early years
Reinefarth was born in Gnesen (Gniezno), Province of Posen. After finishing the gymnasium in 1922, he studied law at the University of Jena. He became a member of the student fraternity Landsmannschaft Suevia Jena (this was the origin of the "Schmiss" – German for "dueling scar" – on his left cheek). He graduated in 1927 and passed the 1st degree state exams. Until 1930 he completed his application at the local court in Jena and was promoted to judge. On 1 August 1932, he joined the NSDAP and received party identification card 1,268,933. In December of the same year, he joined the SS.

World War II
Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, Reinefarth was conscripted as a reserve Feldwebel. For his actions during the invasion of Poland he received the 2nd Class Iron Cross. He took part in the 1940 campaign against France, for which he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. On 20 April 1942, he was promoted to SS-Brigadeführer, the equivalent of Generalmajor in the Wehrmacht.

After promotion to brigadier, Reinefarth was appointed as General Inspector of SS in the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia. In September 1943, he was transferred to Berlin where he served in the Ministry of Order Police (Hauptamt Ordnungspolizei). On 29 January 1944, Reinefarth was assigned to be SS and Police Leader in Reichsgau Wartheland (Polish Poznań Voivodeship annexed by Germany in 1939).

Warsaw uprising
After the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, Reinefarth was ordered to organise a military unit consisting of personnel from various security units and head for Warsaw. Upon arrival, his forces (Kampfgruppe Reinefarth) were included in the Korpsgruppe von dem Bach of General Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski who was ordered by Heinrich Himmler to quell the rebellion. From 5 August 1944, Reinefarth's group took part in mass murders in the undefended Wola area.

Murder of civilians
In two days, the units of Reinefarth, which included the notorious SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger under SS-Oberführer Oskar Dirlewanger, murdered approximately 60,000 civilian inhabitants of Warsaw in what is known as the Wola massacre. In one of his reports to the commander of the German 9th Army Reinefarth stated that "we have more prisoners than ammunition to kill them". After securing the Wola area, his troops took part in heavy fighting against the Armia Krajowa in the Old Town. In September, his forces were transferred to attack the boroughs of Powiśle and Czerniaków, where they committed further atrocities, including killing of POWs and wounded found in military hospitals. In all 150,000–200,000 Polish civilians were killed during the uprising. For his actions during the Warsaw Uprising Reinefarth was awarded the Oak Leaves to his Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on 30 September 1944.

Later war activity
In November 1944, Reinefarth was given command over the XIV SS Corps on the Upper-Rhine and in December 1944 over the XVIII SS Corps in the central Oder river area. Between January and March 1945, he commanded the defence of "Festung Küstrin" (Kostrzyn nad Odrą). He declined to defend it to the last man and Hitler found fault with the way he withdrew his troops. Himmler, acting on Hitler's order, had Reinefarth arrested at the end of March 1945. Later he was sentenced to death by a military court. However, the sentence was not carried out, and he continued to command those of his troops that managed to leave the fortress. He moved his troops to the west and surrendered to the British.

Postwar
After World War II, the Polish communist authorities demanded his extradition. However, the British and American authorities of occupied West Germany decided that Reinefarth could be useful as a witness at the Nuremberg Trial. After the trials, he was arrested for war crimes, but the local court in Hamburg released him shortly afterwards on the grounds of lack of evidence. Reinefarth went on to live a normal life. In December 1951, he was elected mayor of the town of Westerland, the main town on the island of Sylt. In 1962, he was elected to the parliament (Landtag) of Schleswig-Holstein. After his term ended in 1967, he worked as a lawyer. Despite numerous demands by Communist Poland, he was not extradited as the German courts had ruled that there was no evidence of him committing any crimes. He was considered not guilty in the eyes of the law and the federal government. He received a general's pension upon retirement. He died on 7 May 1979 in his mansion on Sylt.

Legacy
In 2014, the local authorities of Westerland raised a memorial table remembering Polish victims of Reinefarth. A local SPD member, Ernst Wilhelm Sojan, who was present at the ceremony had campaigned since the 1960s to raise awareness of acts committed by Reinefarth but said that he was always met with a "wall of silence". The regional Schleswig-Holstein government issued a special statement expressing regret that Heinz Reinefarth had been allowed to work as politician in the region. Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski praised the authorities of Sylt for attempting to deal with its past.

Awards

 * Iron Cross (1939) 2nd Class (25 September 1939) & 1st Class (28 May 1940)
 * Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves
 * Knight's Cross on 25 June 1940
 * 608th Oak Leaves on 30 September 1944 as SS-Gruppenführer and Generalleutnant of the Police, and commander of a Kampfgruppe in the Korpsgruppe von dem Bach

Films
"Holiday on Sylt" 1957 by the Eastern German film director Andrew Thorndike

title: Heinz Reinefarth


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Rutan Quickie

The Rutan Model 54 Quickie is a lightweight single-seat taildragger aircraft of composite construction, configured with tandem wings.

The Quickie was primarily designed by Burt Rutan as a low-powered, highly efficient kit-plane. Its tandem wing design has one anhedral forward wing and one slightly larger dihedral rear wing. The forward wing has full-span control surfaces and is thus similar to a canard wing, but is considerably larger. The aircraft has unusual landing gear, with the main wheels located at the tips of the forward wing.

Design and development
The Quickie Aircraft Corporation was formed to produce and market the Quickie in kit form after 1978. Two years later a two-seater variant of the same layout followed as the Q2. The original Quickie (Model 54 in Rutan's design series) is one of several unconventional aircraft penned by Rutan for the general aviation market.

The Quickie followed from Jewett and Sheehan's intention in 1975 for a low-cost, low-power, single-seat homebuilt aircraft. The first element to be found by Jewett and Sheehan was the engine, which – although low-powered (they had anticipated 12 hp) – had to be reliable for aviation work. With the help of Onan, a manufacturer of industrial four-stroke engines, they were able to procure a 70 lb engine that would deliver 18 hp (14 kW) at 3,600 rpm.

Rutan was then involved with the design; Sheehan and Jewett suggesting a scaled-down Vari-Eze. After a preliminary pusher canard configuration design (Rutan Model 49) had been discarded, his solution to the design issues of low drag without retractable undercarriage and a workable center of gravity travel, was a tractor engine/tandem wing layout. Conversely to canard layout, the conventional front engine location put the pilot close to the center of gravity, a key point for a light aircraft. The wheels were incorporated into wingtip fairings without much drag penalty and the tandem layout gave safe stalling characteristics. Rutan produced the first drawings in May 1977 and thereafter the three of them worked on the design drawings over the next two months with construction beginning in August After the first flights, Rutan spent more time with his Defiant design and other projects, and it was Jewett and Sheehan who continued development of the design and market it for home-build use. An agreement was reached that Rutan would fund the development and testing and once the design was complete they would pay Rutan back from future sales of the designs and kits.

Configuration
The Quickie is a tandem wing taildragger, having one forward wing and one rear wing (instead of the more usual main wing and tailplane). According to Rutan this layout was not new, having previously been used in aircraft such as the Mignet "Flying Flea".

As with other Rutan designs, the Quickie is constructed of glass fibre and resin over a foam core. The wings are foam blanks cut to shape with a hot wire before covering, and the fuselage made up of 1 inch-thick (25.4 mm) foam slabs.

The forward wing provides around 60% of the lift. The full-span control surfaces on the forward wing serve as combined elevators and flaps. Ailerons are located inboard on the rear wing which is shoulder-mounted just aft of the pilot. The tandem layout provides positive lift from both pairs of wings; whereas on a conventional aircraft, the tailplane mostly provides negative lift.

The Quickie has fixed (non-retractable) main wheels faired into spats located at the tips of the forward wing. The absence of separate landing gear helps to reduce both weight and drag, such savings allowing a smaller engine and a smaller fuel tank. Even though the propeller is of small diameter, propeller clearance remains limited and the Quickie is rather vulnerable to ground strikes.

Pilot controls include a side-stick on the right and a throttle on the left. Rudder pedals are linked to the steerable tailwheel. The rather crude cable-operated brake comprises a cockpit lever operating steel tire-scrubbers on each main wheel.

Construction and flight tests
Construction of the prototype commenced in August 1977 at the Rutan Aircraft Factory; Gene did the majority of the construction work and the prototype was completed in about 400 hours. The prototype Quickie registered "N77Q" (77 for 1977, Q for Quickie.) started its flight test program on November 1977. All three of the designers flew it on the first day. The prototype was modified during its test program. The span of both the canard and main wing were increased to improve lifting ability. These reduced stall speed and shortened takeoff and landing distances; its attitude on the ground was also adjusted for optimal takeoff and landing. Originally designed with a fixed fin and only the faired tailwheel acting as the rudder, a conventional rudder was substituted. The steerable tailwheel allows directional control up to the point of liftoff, as the Quickie does not lift its tail during the takeoff run. Although it takes off at around 55 mph and its maximum speed of 126 mph is impressive for its engine power, the rate of climb is "modest". The flight test program was completed in mid-April 1978, five months after its first flight.

Recognition and records
In June 1978 a Quickie prototype was flown to the Experimental Aircraft Association's annual gathering at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh at Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where the aircraft drew intense public interest and won the Outstanding New Design Award.

Production
In June 1978, only two months after the prototype's first flight, Jewett and Sheehan formed the Quickie Aircraft Corporation to produce and sell complete aircraft kits. Production began in June 1978, and by 1980 the Corporation had sold 350 kits. Other firms were granted marketing rights, and ultimately some 1,000 Quickie kits were sold. The Corporation closed its doors in the mid 1980s.

Aircraft on display

 * British Columbia Aviation Museum
 * Canada Aviation and Space Museum
 * Canadian Museum of Flight
 * Deutsches Museum
 * EAA AirVenture Museum
 * New England Air Museum

title: Rutan Quickie


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