Hard to believe another week down. Looks like I finally get a week back here in town for a change, only a week mind, the following week I am back out at Moura. I may as well just move out there the way things are going, we have so much work on it isn't funny.
And our friendly south african is leaving us... so we are a man down too. Anyone know of any radio tech's after a job in Australia? Send them my way. I'm serious, we need more staff.
Well, an interesting week, as most mine weeks tend to be. I was cruising around on my own this week, so didn't have any major driving encounters this week, luckily.
First job on tuesday was a good one, I had to go and change a solar panel out for one of the environmental blast monitors. So I collared a spare apprentice to lend a hand, and collected an enviro to show us where it was, and we went for a drive. I almost ran over a 1.5 foot long lizard just as we left the carpark, if it wasn't for the screams of the enviro I probably wouldn't have seen the blasted thing... so that was a good start. If a lizard wants to camouflage himself as road, then proceed to sleep in the middle of one, it's hardly my fault for not seeing him.
After doing my best to placate the visibly shaken enviro, we carried on our way and finally made it to the property where the blast monitor was housed. The enviro wouldn't let us drive any faster than 20km/h incase we stirred up too much dust. We got a large gate, behind which was an equally large bull. The enviro panicked and started to call the farmer to open the gate. I said to her to stop worrying, and that it would take more than a gate and a bull to stop a determined kiwi. So I went and opened the gate, and we drove through. The bull gave us a strange look and carried on chewing grass. When we got to the monitor, we found that the mount we thought was going to be there and the mount that was there were two completely different things. So we took some measurements, battled the gate again, and drove back to make up a better bracket. I dropped the enviro off and told her I would let her know once we had it going again.
My first problem was finding a suitable material to fabricate the bracket out of. I was intending to use alloy, but finding alloy on the mine is about as easy as finding a donkey tree on the moon. So I abandoned that plan, and located some steel instead. There is a lot more steel available than alloy. So after drilling the appropriate holes and bending the appropriate bends, I managed to book some paint out of the stores and gave it the once over. We had to give it about 1/2 hour to dry of course, then we loaded it up and drove back to the monitor.
Once we got there, I discovered that the "alloy" brackets which I had thought where in place, where actually galvanised steel. And that where I thought I could bend it, I could not. So, out came the hacksaw and plenty of elbow grease, and we made some minor modifications. Which took a long time, as hacksawing thick steel a foot above your head isn't terribly straightforward.
I then had to drill the steel mount to fit my predrilled brackets I had made up. Where I could use the drill press for my brackets, out here in the middle of nowhere all I had was my trusty dewalt. So, starting with a small pilot hole and working my way up, over about an hour I managed to get 3 holes drilled. The fourth one gave me considerable grief, and cost me three drill bits... but we made it in the end. As it turns out I would have been better just to weld it, but I didn't realise that at the time. So, bolted the new panel and mounts up, and it worked perfectly, first time. Wired it all up, checked the monitor was working, and it had about 100 alarms up for "excessive noise"... I guess all that hacksawing was a bit much for it's microphone. We cleared the alarms, and all was well in blast monitor land again. Not bad for an entire day's work really.
The next few days were more of the usual, fixing an antenna here, and a microphone there. Dodging large trucks, and trying to keep out of the sun... 36 degrees it got up to at one point. Summer is going to be a killer.
I spent another day mounting four solar panels to a portable networking trailer too, that was another good way to kill a day. Over all, quite a productive week for the nixon fabrication department.
I was staying at a different camp this time around, for many reasons which are far to laborious and not interesting enough to warrant me recounting them here. But the food was much improved over the usual camp.
Righto, I better go and attempt to repair my cellphone... I lost my one button which locks and unlocks the phone, and finally my spare arrived from Hong Kong. Now I just have to find out how to pull it apart without damaging it beyond repair...
Here's some photos from the week.
Ciao.
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