Back in 2013, Oris first collaborated with Australia’s Royal Flying Doctors Service, with the product of their initial partnership being the Oris Royal Flying Doctor Service Limited Edition watch based on the 44mm dual-crown Big Pilot series. Now, the watchmaker and the non-profit aeromedical service providing airborne medical care for Australia’s vast remote regions release the new Oris Royal Flying Doctor’s Service Limited Edition II, an updated and refreshed model. It’s a rugged 45mm automatic pilot’s watch based on Oris’ successful Big Crown series with a printed pulsations track for ascertaining a patient’s heart rate and nods to the organization throughout.
Based on the Oris Big Crown series, the new Oris Royal Flying Doctor’s Service Limited Edition II, at 45mm, has a slightly larger three-piece stainless steel case, one crown at three o’clock (the previous version had two crowns), and an updated pulsations track on the bidirectional rotating internal bezel designed for improved ease and speed of use. The new pulsations scale is measured over twenty heartbeats as opposed to the previous edition’s thirty heartbeats, which allows for a quicker determination of a patient’s pulse.
This works by rotating the bezel so that the beginning of the pulsations scale is aligned with the seconds hand and then counting twenty of the patient’s heart beats. At the twentieth heart beat, the tip of the seconds hand will be pointing to the patient’s per-minute heart rate on the pulsations scale. The majority of doctor’s watches with a pulsation complication function by means of a chronograph seconds hand and a stationary pulsations track printed around the dial where we so often see a tachymeter scale. Notably, this new version has a water resistance of 50 meters, down from the 100M water resistance of the previous version.
The internal bezel features the organization’s logo at the pulsometer’s zero point, and the solid caseback has the logo engraved at its center, rather than the partial exhibition caseback of the previous model. The dial indices and sword hands are coated in Super-LumiNova and the rotating bezel ring can be used for tracking of a second time zone or for the pulsometer feature. Powered by the Oris cal. 735, based on the Sellita SW 220-1, the new Oris Royal Flying Doctor Service Limited Edition II watch’s movement operates at 28,800vph with a power reserve of 38 hours.
With the Royal Flying Doctor’s Service Limited Edition II, Oris has once again done what we know them to do well by blending utilitarian legibility and classic aviation design language in a limited-edition watch which honors their partner organization’s mission. The Oris Royal Flying Doctor Service Limited Edition II is available with either a brown leather strap, a bracelet, or a crocodile strap, and it comes in a wooden presentation box with the the RFDS logo on top. The Oris Royal Flying Doctor Service Limited Edition II will have a price of 1,900 CHF on leather or 2,100 CHF on a bracelet or crocodile strap. oris.ch
