A digital console radio system has replaced the Australian Royal Flying Doctor Service’s (RFDS) 1990s radio installation.
This latest system from Zetron is the DCS 5020. It integrates telephony and radio, call handling, monitoring and logging and brings all these functions into a single operator interface.
Installed in the Broken Hill base of the RFDS, the system supports up to 30 channels and 16 screen-based operator consoles, each of which includes a host PC, video monitor and desktop speakers.
These operator positions are provided along with multiple radio inputs over HF, VHF and UHF and phone circuits.
This latest installation replaces a 17-year-old Zetron 4010 radio dispatch console and a combination of HF, VHF and UHF radios.
Providing information and recommendations to the RFDS was AA Radio Services, based in Melbourne.
AA Radio Services project manager Ian Miller says the company was first contacted to help repair and maintain the user’s existing system.
Miller explains how the RFDS’s DCS-5020 system was implemented.
“The system was designed and assembled in the AA Radio Services workshop in Melbourne,” he says. “We then transported it to the client’s location about 700 km away. Our technical crew installed and commissioned the system over a period of five days, then made a follow-up visit to refine the system to meet the user’s unique requirements.”
“The daily operations of the RFDS could not be compromised. We often had to stand back and allow the operators to complete their tasks before we could proceed with ours. But these challenges were all easily overcome because we had planned and prepared for them,” says Miller.
The RFDS has a long history of radio innovation beginning in the 1920s with the famous pedal radios under the inspiration of RFDS founder the Rev John Flynn. Originally designed to last a year, the system went from strength to strength even during the depression and World War II.
Today, the RFDS is one of the largest aero-medical organisations in the world. It delivers primary healthcare and 24-hour emergency services to people living in rural and remote areas of Australia. The organisation now has a fleet of 60 aircraft operating from 21 bases across the country. It provides medical assistance to over 275,000 people each year - about one person every two minutes.
Separated into four geographic sections; Central Operations, the Queensland Section, Western Operations, and the South Eastern Section, each section has several bases from which the service’s aircraft are operated and dispatched. Broken Hill is the main base for the South Eastern Section. It services NSW and parts of neighbouring states in an area of about 640,000 km2.
The RFDS has become an Australian institution that has led to better health and treatment for thousands of outback residents. Each year the Broken Hill base sees over 13,000 patients, conducts over 1600 clinic sessions and transports over 900 patients by air.
Modern radio communications should see the Royal Flying Doctor Service carry on its medical mission around the country for years to come.