OK Shonagh, just for you.

Kia ora.

Yes, that's right. I finally have got around to writing an update. By writing an update, I actually mean write a few lines and pretend to call it an update. I am doing this for two reasons. Firstly, I have been incredibly slack in the update department of late, and certain people seem to enjoy reminding me of this fact with surprising regularity. Secondly, I am now temporarily back in NZ, so if there are any kiwi's who read this and want to catch up whilst I am here, let me know. Assuming there are actually kiwi's who read this. Assuming there is actually anyone anywhere who actually reads this. Thirdly... well. There is no thirdly. Otherwise I would be doing this for three reasons, not two as aforementioned. Pay attention.

Basically, there so much to report, I'm never going to be able to catch up. So, starting next year, when I return to Aus... I shall endeavour to actually keep on top of this for a while. I won't make any promises, but I shall see what I can do.

In the mean time, have a splendid new year and here's to 2011... what a year it has been.

Fire and Rain

G'day.

I have finally managed to scrape together a few spare minutes to attempt to write a little more of an update, as looking back it has been a couple of weeks. I would make the usual "time flies" comments but I imagine any regular followers will be well tired of that line by now, so we shall just take it as read. It's been a while so the old memory is a little vague on what exactly I did the last couple of weeks...

One job I did undertake was inspecting an underground system at a gold mine, that was pretty interesting. That's the second time I have been under ground now, it's quite an experience. I think this mine is down to about 1000 vertical meters down, which is about 4 KM to drive, and takes about an hour to get down, depending on how much traffic is around. It gets surprisingly warm down there, especially when the aircon in the vehicle is intermittent... but however, we made some discoveries as to how the system could work better, so it was a worthwhile exercise.

I think the rest of that week was mostly around Gladstone from memory, the odd bench repair here and there, and a couple of other antenna installation jobs. We had a bit of a tower job to do at one of the mines, all was going well until my pocket started ringing. Usually I don't have a drama answering the phone up a tower, but this particular time the phone got caught in my harness and by the time I realised what was happening it was merrily sailing on it's way 30 meters to the ground. Needless to say, it ended up in a thousand pieces. Luckily Dan managed to recover my sim card, and surprisingly enough I managed to piece everything back together enough to actually connect it to my computer and remove all my data from the phone itself. That really is a testament to the bullet-proof quality than Nokia handsets are known for.

This last week I was back at the mine chasing dozers and trucks and all sorts of other equipment around trying to repair faults. Mostly just the usual "rock hit aerial" problems, but there was the occasional interesting one. Anything in a dozer tends to get a pretty hard time, as they rattle their way around everything gets shaken up, including the drivers brains it appears. This makes for a lot of intermittent faults, where everything works perfectly when you test it stationary but the moment they try to drive off it all goes haywire. I have spent many hours chasing my tail over faults like that at times. I went to have a look at one dozer, parked up in the usual "safe LV park", and was working away when there was a dull "thump". The dozer driver looked at me and said "did you see that mate?" I replied that I hadn't, and he pointed at my truck. A large rock had fallen from the wall of their "safe" area and rolled right into the rear corner of my truck, removing the bumper mounts in the process. It's probably a good thing it hit the wheel rim as otherwise it would have done more damage. I managed to bend it back into shape and a couple of cable ties should solve the problem for now.

Other than that, not a lot to report at this stage, just the usual work eat sleep pattern. Next week should be interesting, I've heard on the grapevine that we could be doing a fair bit of driving, but I won't know the details until I get to work on Monday. I finally caved in a bought a new phone yesterday, my poor old N97 has finally got to the point where the continual crashing is more than just a mild inconvenience. Hopefully the new one doesn't follow suit, but so far I have been pleasantly surprised with its performance.

Anyhow, despite the lack of depth in this update I am going to leave you with some photographs, I will endeavour to construct something a little more entertaining next time around when I have more time.

TTFN!

Barricades and Brickwalls

G'day.

It's a surprise, I know, actually managing to update this thing two consecutive weeks in a row... but I thought I better write up some of last week's adventure before I forget. A reasonably busy week, this one, I think I managed to drive just over 2100 KM all up in the last 5 days. At least 100 series land cruisers are comfortable, even if somewhat lacking in power.

The week started early, about 7:00 on Monday to be precise. Ryan and I were tasked to visit around 16 of our cell sites which we look after, performing routine maintenance and also labelling some cables in preparation for a new upgrade which is due to happen shortly. We hit the ground running so that we could try to get them done in three days, as we have quite a bit of work on at the moment. Leaving Gladstone, we saw some of the results from the bushfires that we are experiencing at the moment. You couldn't see the end of the road for all the smoke in the air. You could see still smouldering trees, and the ground all around was black from where the fire had come through. There were hardwood power poles lying down, and others with only about 3 inches of wood left at the bottom holding them up, swaying around in the breeze, just ready to fall over at the slightest provocation. As we got further out of town and the smoke cleared a little, we cranked up the music and settled in for the 3 and a half hour drive to the first site on our list.

The drive itself being relatively uneventful, we arrived in due course and performed the necessary works. We discovered that I had forgotten to bring a broom to sweep the comms huts out with, so we ducked over to the local supermarket in order to purchase one. We know about two people in this particular town, and we joked that we should have visited them whilst we were here. We arrived at the super market, jump out of the truck, and who do we run into but the exact person we had just been talking about. Good old small towns... we yarned to her for a bit and then proceeded to purchase the required broom. As we headed out and climbed back into the truck, who should we see but the wife of one of our techs from another branch, who had recognised the Nixon logo on the door. After briefly saying hello to her, we finally got on our way, laughing at how you can go miles away from anywhere in a huge country and still run into people you know.

We travelled to the next site, completed it, and then headed on the next big leg of our journey which took us back out to the coast, just below Mackay. I hadn't driven up in this area of the country much, and we saw some interesting things, including a road train with 4 trailer units. Unfortunately I didn't think to take a photograph, but I will be on the case next time. Even after being here as long as I have, I was still amazed by the amount of mines up in this area, probably a good indication of why the district is known as the "coalfields". There is one heck of a lot of coal coming of of this place, and the flow on effect of the money that generates is phenomenal. We arrived at the town we were booked in to stay at just on dark, but in order to give us the best chance of getting the job done on time we decided to go to the next site, seeing as it was in the same town, and get that done before we knocked off for the day. Surprisingly, we managed to find the site without too much difficulty and the job was reasonably straight forward. I heard a couple of possums in the trees, but luckily the giant spiders hadn't yet come out for the night. (They were probably still trying to catch the possums). We signed off for the day, and headed back down the hill to our motel.

After obtaining our keys, and having the usual "yes, we are kiwis" conversation with the proprietor, she suggested we head down the road to the local steakhouse for our dinner. We decided that sounded a sterling plan, and proceeded to do exactly that. As it was reasonably late by this time, there weren't a lot of people there, so the service was excellent, as was the steak. They were handing out $2 free on the pokies, which was a cunning ploy to get you in and start spending your cash. I had $1 change in my pocket, so that combined with the $2 they had supplied gave me $3 of gambling credit. Being no good at pokies whatsoever, I hit random buttons and eventually managed to get $6 out of it, which I promptly cashed out and bought a drink with. Not too bad for what in essence was a $1 outlay. I suspect the idea was to keep gambling it, but knowing my luck I would have then walked out $1 down instead of $5 up. It gave us about 30 seconds of entertainment for the evening if nothing else. After thanking our hostess, we headed back to the motel, which as it turns out was rather appropriately named "The Tramway". I say appropriately named, because right next door is the main railway line, which I thought nothing more about until I tried to get to sleep. One thing about being near the coalfields... that coal has to get to a port. Usually, this involves trains. And a lot of them. Every half an hour or so, whoosh, it sounded like the world was about to end, for about 2 minutes while the 2km long train went past. Just as you got to sleep again, crash bang there goes another one. The only other slight disappointment was the quality of the mattress, which in my case, I suspect they had forgotten to install. It felt like I was sleeping on solid planks of wood. Not the best nights stay, but it was the only place which still had room.

The next morning, we left the motel at 6 and headed off to get another site done before breakfast. The next site had a huge sign on the gate, saying "do not lock anyone else's padlock out! by order." Thinking "yes, that's common sense..." we went to unlock the gate... and found that we had been locked out. Curses. After some slight modifications to the gate with a pair of cutters, we managed to work our way around that little hurdle. When we got to the top, we found 3 other vehicles up there, they were holding quite a party at this little site. We managed to get enough room to do our bit, and then we carried on. We kept on like that all the way down the coast, and a few sites later we were just putting on the final touches when yet I heard a loud revving noise and eventually another 4WD showed up. The fellow got out and explained he was here to label some cables... I said "what, like these ones?" and he said "yes, those ones exactly". It transpired that in their wisdom, the company who had sent us out to do the labelling had in fact doubled up on several sites, and he had already done about 3 on our list and we had done the same off his list. We swapped photographs and both signed off on them, so that saved us all a little time.

We carried on down the coast and just on dark (yet again) hit our final planned site for the day. We finished that one off, signed off for the day, and drove into Rocky where we were planning on staying the night. Well, we probably should have planned better and actually booked ahead, as about the only thing we managed to find was "no vacancy" signs. Toying with our options, we eventually weighed up the odds and decided to drive the hour back to Gladstone and then start early and return in the morning, as we only had 4 sites left to inspect. We did exactly that, and first thing the next day we headed back up the road. By now I was starting to feel my steering arm shoulder a little bit, as we had spent a great deal of time on the road. We drove out to the first site of the day, and found that all we had to do was stick two labels on. We went to the next site, and found much the same. Thinking we were on to a good thing, we headed off to the second to last site for the day.

That was about where my luck ran out, of course. When we arrived, I stopped for a few minutes to grab a bite to eat. I was consuming some chips, when a loud swooping sound sailed past my ear. Turns out that the natives crows up here seem to be quite partial to chips. I threw a few to them to keep them off, and all that did was encourage more to appear from thin air. I decided to play a game, and held a chip out at arms length to see if he would be keen enough to eat of of my hand. He looked at me sideways, and hopped a little closer. He thought for a minute, looked at me again... and then made eating motions with his beak. I told him to stop being silly and just come and grab it. He looked at me sideways again.. and hopped a little closer. I told him if he didn't hurry up I would eat it. He looked at me again, opened his beak, and made a mad dash for the chip, grabbing it, and then flying away at a great rate of knots. Just as he sat down to eat it, another one came along and pinched it. I felt a little sorry for him, after all his hard work getting the chip just to lose it like that, so I threw him another one which I am certain he appreciated.

Crows aside, we then decided to actually do some work and I began to get ready to climb the tower. We then discovered that a ladder probably would have been a handy tool to have... Not one to be beaten, I decided to lasso the bottom pole step with my pole strap and use that as a leg up. I had my harness on by this point, and attached to the front was a reasonably heavy metal device known as a "ladsafe" which clips around the wire rope running up the tower and supposedly catches you if you happen to let go. I decided to have a crack at it, jumped as high as I could and threw my rope. I missed, of course, but that wasn't the worst bit. Jumping up was all good. When my weight began the downward motion however, this metal ladsafe was still trying to go upward, and smacked me in the chest. I landed on the ground again, thinking all was well, and then the ladsafe which was now about at chest height decided to continue it's downward motion, with a sort of pendulum effect. Which travelled on a perfect arc, and smacked me straight in the crutch. I spent the next 5 minutes somewhat speechless, rolling around on the ground cursing the fact that I hadn't foreseen this major incident. I eventually picked myself up, looked at Ryan, who was still laughing, and moved the ladsafe to the back of my harness. "Righto, ready for another go?"

Eventually I managed to make it onto the tower, and of course once I was onto the pole steps we were away like a rat up a drain pipe. Just a rather slow rat today, as I was still feeling somewhat drained of energy. We carried on with the rest of the job, and finally managed to sign off and head to our last job of the day, which was on top of an 8 story hotel. We eventually managed to get the correct keys from the girl at the front desk, and then jumped into the elevator, pushing the "8" button to take us to the eighth floor. The door had only just closed and the elevator just moved, when the door went "ding" and opened again, as there was a woman waiting to get on. I noticed that this was only the 1st floor, and expected her to get in and we would continue on our way. The woman looked at us and said "Are you getting out here?" Ryan, in his wisdom, said "Yes, thanks!" and walked out. Wondering what on earth he was doing, but following his lead in case he has spotted something that was worth looking at, I followed him out. He went to the door to the stair well, and said "righto, just up here isn't it?" I looked at him and said "Yes, about 8 floors up... this is only the 1st floor you idiot!" He looked at me in disbelief, but as we climbed flight after flight of stairs it dawned on him that I wasn't making it up. Ah well, I guess I could do with the exercise.

We managed to finish the job at this site, and just as we were preparing to leave, we got a call. It transpired there was another site on the way home that was off air for some reason, and would we mind having a quick look? Thinking it would be simple, we agreed to take a butchers on the way past. Luckily we had GPS on Ryan's iPad, which had the site marked, as neither of us had been to this particular site before. We looked at the track on the satellite view and it looked like it was going through a motor camp, so we drove into the camp and drove around for a while getting stared at by all the campers, as it was almost getting dark yet again. We eventually spotted a track that looked like it headed in the right direction, and long story short, eventually made it to the site.

The first thing we notice, is that the equipment is mounted half way up the pole. Really would have been a great day to pack a ladder. Yet again, not to be beaten, we had a bit of a measure up and worked out that the width of my truck was just less than the distance between the pole and the fence, so we backed it in and managed to reach the box on the pole by standing on the roof rack. As I went to open the box, I heard a reasonable buzzing sound.. thinking it might have been coming from the power supply, I had a quick look underneath and came face to face with a wasp. I frantically leaped off my truck and when I realised that I wasn't yet being chased, I had a closer look. Sure enough, a wasp nest was on the bottom of the gear, right on the bit I needed to move to get the box open. Would have been a great day to pack some flyspray too, then. Not going to be beaten by a few wasps, we decided a can of Inox spray would be the go, perhaps making their wings too slippery to fly or something. I could only see about 4 wasps at this point, so was reasonably confident I could get them all. I snuck back up onto my truck, and let rip. I managed to hit about 2 of the four, then the other two came at me. Yet again, I let out a yelp and dove off the truck, and hared off down the track with Ryan hot on my heels. Once I was confident we had out run them, we headed back to investigate the situation. The spray must of upset them, because there were about 30 other wasps beginning to crawl out of the nest. Brilliant. I jokingly asked Ryan if he had a lighter... and he said "Yes! Do it!" We tested the waters, and sure enough, it was reasonably flammable. Weighing up the options, and knowing that it was rapidly getting dark and we had to get into this thing somehow, I decided to give it a shot. I lit my improvised flamethrower and those wasps didn't know what hit them. Little balls of fire falling from the nest, it was pretty successful. Until I stopped spraying, but the nest didn't stop burning. I looked at Ryan..."it will go out shortly" But it didn't... I was watching the fire get closer to the plastic insulation on the cables, and weighing up whether or not to hit it with the fire extinguisher that we had prepared just in case... when "Whoosh!" Ryan disappeared in a cloud of smoke. Turned out he had decided the fire wasn't going to go out, and he had hit it with the extinguisher. But, standing downwind, he wore most of the powder, and emerged spluttering and coughing away.

A couple of the wasps that had somehow survived decided to interject at this point, so he hit them with the extinguisher too. They didn't like that much, and flew away. After sweeping up the mess, we finally managed to get into the cabinet and traced the fault. I was standing on my truck on the phone to their head office, ordering a replacement part, when I felt this thing brush past my hand, and found yet another wasp... I let out another yelp and jumped off the truck yet again. The girl on the other end of the phone thought the world was about to end, but I explained to her that it was OK, I was just escaping a wasp. She mentioned that she was glad it was me out here and not her. After getting the order under way, we closed everything back up, and by now it was very dark. We managed to navigate our way down the track, and made it back to town in one piece.

The next day, we were tasked to yet another site, down south this time. Luckily for us, this one was somewhat less eventful, if you don't include hillbilly farmers spending half the day trying to talk to Ryan, and complaining about people stealing their "cleanskins" which are apparently cattle. Friday, I spent the day on a dragline at a nearby mine, fixing some cameras.... a bit of a story there too, but I suspect I may have written enough for one update. I shall leave you with the customary photos, there are more on the camera at work, but these ones will do for now.

TTFN!

Hold On

G'day.

I decided it must be time to attempt to scratch together a few words, seeing as it appears to be a few weeks since I last wrote anything in the public domain. As usual, time is flying by, I can barely believe that is is October already. 3 more months and then the year is gone. They do say time flies when you are having fun.

A couple of fairly busy weeks, as per usual. One week I had a cabling job to do in town, where we had to set up a wireless link system and also install a rack cabinet and around 24 odd data points in a few nearby buildings. As we had to use an elevated work platform to access the roof to install the radio gear, we expected to have a few hoops to jump through. We asked the fellow in charge what paperwork he would require, and was pleasantly surprised when he replied that they don't need work method statements on that site, they prefer to just get the work done safely using common sense. I couldn't believe that we were actually still in Australia for a moment there. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, we got stuck into the job and managed to get it all completed in a reasonable time frame. The job was done safely, smoothly, and economically, and it was refreshing to find there are still some companies out there who realise that paperwork isn't everything when it comes to working safely.

That weekend, I had just cooked my dinner and was settling down to enjoy consuming it when my telephone rang. It was a fellow workmate, and it transpired that he had been out for a drive and had managed to get his 4WD hopelessly stuck. I decided that I had better go and give him a hand, so I wolfed down my meal and made sure I had my snatch strap on board. About at this point I remembered that I had no spare tyre, as I had managed to obtain a puncture whilst out at the mine the week before and it was still being repaired. I decided to call into work and pick up the spare spare, just in case...

I picked up yet another Nixon bloke and we took off towards our bogged colleague. He was about 60 odd KM out of town, and it was well dark by the time we got nearby. I called him up on the radio, and by then he had walked out to the main road to guide us in to where he was stuck. We managed to locate him and we went on a bit of a journey in through the bush to his truck. When he said hopelessly stuck, he wasn't underestimating the situation. He and the people with him and attempted to dig it out, and of course ended up with the vehicle sitting on the axles and going nowhere. I sized up the situation, and determined the closest possible distance I could get my 4WD in without ending up bogged myself. I ended up having to join a winch extension to my snatch strap to get the range, and luckily remembered to put a stick in the join so that I could separate them again after the operation. I said to them, "we are going to try this once... it is either going to work splendidly well, or else not at all". I instructed my workmate to hop back into his truck, and to be sure to fasten his seatbelt... I called him up on the radio and gave the countdown, and then began to move forward. I felt the snatch strap take the strain, then, exactly as they are designed to work, the strap sprung him out of the situation at a great rate of knots. He later informed me that he only remembered the seatbelt as I was counting down, and was frantically trying to fit it before I pulled him out. He was somewhat thankful that he got it on just in time...

We packed up the equipment, had a bit of a laugh about it, then I began to drive out so he could turn around and follow me. I had got about 500 meters down the track when the radio crackled into life... "Yea, Carl... you better come back mate, I've done it again."

Sure enough... in his attempt to turn the truck around, he strayed into the soft sandy mess yet again and managed to become stuck yet again. This time it proved a little more challenging, as he was 90 degrees off the track so it was a lot more difficult to achieve a straight line pull. A winch and snatch block would have been handy, but unfortunately my land rover is across the Tasman... I went past him and attempted to pull the nose around, with little success, so I went back behind him and managed to get myself in a position that allowed me about 4 meters worth of pulling, before I would run into a tree. We rigged up the pull, and I crossed my fingers and we went for it. The strain took up, he bounced out, and I just managed to haul up about 6 inches in front of the tree. Lucky on that count, then. We packed up yet again, and this time I made him drive out first. He stuck to the track, and made it out in one piece. We followed him out and, he carried on to his camp site. We decided seeing as there wasn't much else happening that night, we may as well join them for a while. After deciding that there was no suitable camp sites anywhere near where he got stuck, we drove another 30 KM and eventually found a suitable beach. Yet again following him, he drove straight through an estuary and I couldn't believe that he didn't drown the poor old vehicle there and then. I went around the water, and met him up on the other side... apparently once he started through the water he realised it was a foolish decision, but of course stopping half way through was guaranteed disaster so he kept up it and was extremely lucky to get through it OK.

We found a suitable site, and had a bit of a campfire, sat around and chewed the fat for a while, and then just after midnight I decided it was probably time to call it a night, so I headed back to Gladstone. So, an eventful evening all in all, probably more entertaining than sitting at home working on my computer.

This last week has been fairly straight forward, we had a bit of a tidy up in the workshop, new lino on the floor, a few splashes of paint here and there, and a general clean up. I ended up moving benches, as during the course of the cleanup I discovered that the benches on the other side of the room are about a foot longer in work space, and have an extra shelf. I couldn't believe that I had been there almost 2 years and had only just discovered that. Anyhow, I'm almost totally moved back in and am beginning to get my bench set up how I'd like. I was supposed to go out to the mine and install some alarm broadcasting equipment, but half of it still hasn't arrived so that never happened. I went for a drive out to Callide, but the fellow who organised the trip had left the country for 3 months and the other fellow who he left in charge was too busy to discuss the job with me, so we ended up taking a few photos and leaving it at that. A bit of a wasted trip really. Mind you, I still get paid, so I'm not complaining.

Next week could be an interesting one, I think there is about 1500 KM of driving involved... 2 of us off to audit some cable labels and perform routine maintenance on a selection of sites to the west and north of Gladstone. A few nights away, a few long days, should be an interesting week.

Anyhow, I shall leave it at that for now, I haven't taken any terribly exciting photos this week but here's a couple for the record.

TTFN!

Fully Alive

G'day.

I've just about forgotten what this blog looks like, it's been a while since I've written much. Things have been pretty busy around here at the moment, and I haven't really had a chance to sit down and try to remember what I've done since the last update.

I spent a week out at Moura straight after the last update, doing the usual repairs and maintenance. Not too much I can remember about that week, other than on the drive home. Dan and I were half way back to Gladstone when we saw a couple of young ladies on the side of the road attempting to change a tire. Dan looked at me, and I looked at Dan. "Do you think we better stop?" I asked. "Yea, I think we better stop." We performed an about face and returned to the chicks on the side of the road. Jumping out, we introduced ourselves and asked them if they required any assistance. "Yes please!" They said. "We have been trying to undo these wheel nuts, but they are too tight!" Trying not to laugh, I told them to stand aside, turned the wheelbrace around, and successfully loosened all the nuts. I didn't say anything to them, and they didn't say anything to me, but at that point in time everyone present realised that they had in fact been trying tighten those wheel nuts.

We carried on with the tire change, and before long they were on their way. A week later a carton turned up at work, so they must of appreciated our efforts. (Or they were trying to buy our silence, I'm not entirely sure...)

The week before last was a pretty interesting week, one of the better weeks I've experienced here so far come to think of it. Monday wasn't too eventful from memory, usual round workshop stuff. Tuesday was when it started to get interesting. Dan and I had a job to do at Bundaberg, and then another one to have a look at in Hervey Bay. We left Gladstone reasonably early, and headed down south. We decided to have a quick look at Bundaberg first, as there was tower work involved and we wanted to get that out of the way before a predicted storm came though. We arrived on site, and found some other riggers from another company replacing some cellular amplifiers up the tower, right where we wanted to work. Seeing as they had got there first we couldn't really kick them off, so we decided to continue on to Hervey Bay and then come back to Bundy on the return trip.

We arrived on site at Hervey Bay, just to find about 6 other people from a Brisbane company doing a similar cellular upgrade at this site too. There were only about 2 of them actually doing any work, and the rest of them seemed to either be arguing about paperwork or standing around doing nothing. Luckily we didn't have to do any tower work at this site, so we fought our way through the rabble and managed to get inside our building. Their safety idiot, uhh, person, bailed us up and made us sign on to their safety plan seeing as we were on what was effectively "their" work area, even though it was a Nixon owned site. We wound him up about that for a few minutes, then signed on to his paperwork to make him go away.

The so called "fault" that we were there to fix wasn't actually a fault at all, more a design flaw in the cellsite. We performed a thousand on site tests for this guy sitting in an office in Brisbane, then he decided that he had been interpreting the results incorrectly and would we mind terribly doing it all again. Some of these guys have no idea... After a few hours had passed and we were no further ahead, we left it for them to decide exactly what they actually wanted to do about it and left site, heading back to Bundaberg. It was about 4 o clock in the afternoon by now, and a good hour or so back to Bundy. We arrived just as it was getting dark, and with the predicted storm forming on the horizon. Dan and I don't call ourselves the "A team" for nothing, so we hurriedly got the new antenna we were replacing off my roof rack and rigged up some ropes. By the time we got the antenna and tools up the tower, it was dark, and we could see distant flashes of lightning. (Don't try this at home.)

We assembled the mounting brackets for the aerial, and I hung off the side of the tower to fit them. Dan handed the antenna down to me, and we bolted it up, trying not to drop any nuts or washers. We moved the feeder across to the new antenna, all the while the thunder clapping in the background and the lightning storm getting closer. We took the camera up to get some photos of the storm but we were flat out getting the work done before we got soaked and never got around to actually taking any photos. We cut the rusted bolts that held the old antenna up, and lowered it to the ground. We had just finished lowering the last of the tools, when we heard the rain coming. About 10 seconds later, we were instantly drenched. If you haven't experienced tropical rain... imagine someone letting a full bucket of water tip on your head all at once, and the water continually poured from the bucket without running out. You get instantly soaked to the skin, and you can't see a hell of a lot. We ran around like headless chooks for a while moving all our gear into my truck and the hut to get it out of the downpour, and we tested the new antenna. Better than it was, but still not perfect. We decided there was no way we could troubleshoot it further at this point, so we decided to call it a day, seeing as by now it was about half past 8. Just as soon as it stopped, the rain eased off a bit, enough for us to run all the gear back to the truck and start the drive back to Gladstone. Most of the way home we were accompanied by impressive lightning, and occasional bands of torrential rain. It made for an interesting trip anyway.

Wednesday we were to go to Emerald and stay the night, so that on Thursday we could do a job there on an ambulance tower. We were planning on leaving around midday, and just before we went to get packed up a fellow from a nearby mine called up to say that they had trouble with one of their shovel microphones and could we please address it urgently. Apart from the branch manager, at present I am the only other person inducted at that particular mine, so plans were made so that Dan and I would call in there on the (long way) round to Emerald. We arrived at the mine around about half past 3, and we put Dan though a short visitors induction so that he could come on site as well. (Technically he isn't allowed to touch any tools or do any work under a visitors induction, he is only allowed to "advise". ) We met the on site electrician who drove us down to the shovel. We spent half an hour or so repairing the fault, and made our way back to the main gate. We got out of there about half 5, and started the three and a half hour drive to Emerald. We got to Dingo, and decided to stop for a meal at the road house there. After a quick bite to eat, we continued on, with around another hour and a half until Emerald. Just as we got through Blackwater, we saw a ute on the side of the road in a very unusual position. We thought perhaps someone had fallen asleep and driven off the road, as happens all too often here. We spun around and drove back to take a closer look. We illuminated the scene with our head lights and made sure the hazards were on to alert anyone else coming down the road to not drive into us, and walked up closer to the ute. We found a young lad and his Mrs there. It transpired he had a rear tire blowout on him, and as his jack was not operational, he was attempting to dig a hole under his wheel so that he could change the tire and drive out of the ditch he ended up in.

We went back to my truck and grabbed my jack and wheel chocks, and managed to get his vehicle high enough to change the tire out. He was pretty thankful for the help, and offered beer in return. (The usual aussie currency). We left him to it, and continued on our way. It was about half past 9 by this time, and the motel in Emerald rang us to find out where we were. Dan replied "sorry we are late, we were helping a stricken motorist!" The lady on the other end of the phone said "you are where?" I suspect the accent probably didn't help. We told her we were about half an hour away, and she told us the keys would be under the mat. Which, when we arrived, was exactly where the keys were. Two flat tire changes in 2 weeks, I wonder if we can make it a hat-trick?

Thursday morning came around far to quickly, and after a quick bite to eat at the motel, we found ourselves on the door of the ambo station at about 7:00 to get the keys to their radio site. We managed to find the appropriate keys and headed off to the site, which was only about 10 km up the road. This was one of the most unusual towers I have ever had to climb. They had taken one tower which was too short, and then appear to have welded another tower to the top of it to make a 100 foot tower that looks a bit like a giant chirstmas tree. It made the rope work interesting, because there is a lip in the middle to get around which isn't normally present on towers. The job was to take out the length of pipe that was in the top of the tower, and replace it with one I had on the roof of my truck, and then mount two new antennas on that. I had a bit of a look at the pipe up there, and mentioned to Dan that it didn't look much shorter than the one I had. After some debating, we decided to measure it. We started with the one on my truck... 6.5 meters. OK. Then, we climbed up the tower, and measured the one there. What do you know... 6.5 meters as well. That bit of the job just got a whole lot easier, then.

We roped up the two new antennas, and mounted them with minimal fuss. There was a phasing harness which went between the two, and we fitted that as we winched the length of pipe taller and taller, until there was about 5.5 meters of it out the top of the tower. Thinking that was the end of the job, we dropped the tools back down, and went to test the antennas before we cut them across to the transmitter. They tested like there was no antenna on the end of the feeder whatsoever. Damn. I knew this job was going too well. Luckily our meter told us that the distance to fault was about 30 meters, which we estimated to be around about the end of the feeder. I drew the short straw, and climbed back up the tower to check it out. Now, bear in mind that the feeder was now about 2.5 meters above the top of the top step of the tower, so this made life somewhat interesting. I managed to climb on top of the lower antenna, and just managed to reach the connector. The pipe was swaying around in the breeze, it's a good thing I don't get sea sick.

I checked out the connector on the feeder... all OK. I had a look at the brand new phasing harness, (which came with a test report), and checked the connector. That looked OK... except the centre pin appeared to be a long way down the barrel of the connector... I took a closer look, and sure enough, the centre pin that carries the RF was not touching the one from the feeder. That would be the problem, then. I called down to Dan to send up a new connector and my crimp tool, and told him he may as well climb up to hand me parts, as I was a meter above the top point of the tower and didn't have any where to hang the pulley off for him to rope it up. He climbed up and handed me the bits I needed to change the plug. Unfortunately I didn't have the correct connector, so we had to use a female connector and a barrel adaptor to get it the right gender of plug. Which, as it turned out, was lucky, because when I cut the old plug off, the cable was too short to reach the feeder which we had cable tied down the tower and would have been a huge mission to get any slack from. I crimped on the new connector, and asked Dan for the barrel adaptor. "Where's that?" he asked. "Did you not bring it up?" I replied. "No." He said. "That would be down in the truck, then." I informed him. "Oh, of course it is!" he muttered as he made his decent down the tower. Luckily I had one end of the rope by now so I hauled up the adapter without him having to climb back up the tower a third time.

After that, the antennas tested perfectly, and we had them back on air, good as new. It was about 4 o clock by the time we made it out of Emerald, and began the 4 and a half hour drive back to Gladstone.

Friday, we had yet another fun job. We had to go to a nearby hill site and replace some antennas and feeders on a 100 foot winch up tower. We called past work to collect a drum of cable and some special climbing boots which allow you to climb the top narrow section of the winch up tower. We drove off to the site, and finally managed to locate it in the scrub. It appeared that no one had been there for a while, as there was a lot of bush growing nearby, and vines growing up the tower. The guy wires were completely rusted, with very little actually holding the tower up. (That's a job for another day). We cleared some of the bush, and cut down a few trees that were rubbing on the guy wires. We managed to break one of the rusted wires during this process, but luckily there was enough length left to tie it to a nearby tree as a temporary anchor. Come to think of it, it was probably a good place to find a snake really, but luckily we didn't find anything too unusual.

We went into the hut, and turned on the light. After a few minutes of testing the equipment, we smelt smoke... and then heard a crackling sound coming from the light. I ran to the light switch and killed the power, but as the smoke continued I ran for the fire extinguisher. Luckily by the time I got back the smoke had abated, but we tagged out the light and will probably need to take a closer look at it before we try that again. I suspect something had crawled in there and died, but we will no doubt find out. Geckos have a habit of causing electrical explosions, one cell site we had a blow up and found a frog and a gecko both turned to toast.

We undid the antenna cables to test the aerials, and water poured out of the coaxes. Good thing we bought that extra feeder, then. We thoroughly inspected the tower and guy points, and made the call that it was safe enough to climb carefully, as there was another set of temporary guys right at the top of the tower. I shot up the tower like a rat up a drain pipe and we dropped off the old antennas and feeder cables. Dan roped up the new aerial, and I mounted it to the tower. He then roped up the feeder cable, and we connected it all up, weatherproofed it, and cable tied it right down the tower. We installed lightning protection, which was never there before, and tested the antennas. A good result, quite usable. We hooked it all up, and it worked well. By now it was about 5, so we figured that was enough for one week and we packed up and drove back to town.

A fairly busy week indeed, but certainly an enjoyable one.

Come Saturday, I finally decided to build some storage drawers for my truck, as I had grown tired of digging through junk to find my tools in the unorganised mess that was the back of my truck. As usual, the eternal optimist, I hooked in and figured I'd have them knocked up in a day. Not quite, sunshine. About 8 o clock Saturday night I called it, and went home. I headed back Sunday to carry on, and got yarning to a couple of other guys from work who were there doing something else. Eventually by about lunch time I finally got back into it, and by about 9 o clock that night, finally had them built and installed. Some call it dedication, some call it stupidity. I haven't decided which it is yet.

Monday came around far too quickly, and of course, straight back into it again. Nothing too major, a bit around town, usual stuff. A couple of days back out at the mine with the shovel, it broke yet again and I think I've finally managed to permanently fix it this time. I also had to rewire the CCTV cameras on a dragline, which was a last minute "no thought gone into it" job... always my favourite type of job. Not. We got what we could done, but I'm going back this Monday to have another crack at it, and then carrying on to Moura for the rest of the coming week.

Right, I might leave it at that for now, I'll attempt to write smaller more often updates in future, but I can't make any promises.

As usual, I shall leave you with some photographs.

TTFN!

Break on through

G'day.

You should probably imagine a nautical theme playing in the background whilst reading today's brief update, as I seemed to spend most of this week travelling on a ferry back and forth to Curtis Island, just off the coast of Gladstone. Once I finally found the correct ferry, that is.

The plan was to head to the boat ramp at half past 7 in the morning, ready to catch the boat over to the island. Unfortunately through a series of miss communications, I was led to believe that all the boats left the same location at the marina. I got yarning to some other guys waiting for the boat to come, and mentioned where I was destined. They proceeded to inform me that I was in the wrong place to get to where I wanted to go, and my boat left further up the marina. Departure time drawing closer, I loaded all my tools back into my truck and drove to the second ferry location.

Really cutting it fine, as it was now 8:00, the exact departure time for the ferry, I picked up my three bags of tools and ran down the jetty. No boat to be seen. I finally found someone nearby and enquired as to the whereabouts of the vessel, and he informed me that the one I wanted actually left from yet another location. Curses. So, back to the truck again carrying all my tools, and drove to the third location of the day. In an even bigger rush now, as it was after 8, I collected all my tools yet again and ran to the third dock. Still no sign of the boat. Yet again, finally found someone to talk to, and they told me I was still in the wrong place and there was yet a fourth location that the ferry departs from. Curses again. Back to the truck, and drove to the suggested pontoon. Loading up with tools yet again, the entire process becoming somewhat tedious by now, we ran down the pontoon to find that the ferry had already departed. Just my luck. I got talking to a young lass there who then informed me that the induction card I had wouldn't have got me on to this particular boat anyhow, as it was technically for a different site. Although they all have the same name, there are actually three divisions, and you had to have the correct card for the correct division.

A few phone calls later, we found we had to go and undertake a 10 minute induction and quick exam to prove we knew enough to not hurt the loggerhead turtles and the false water rats. (Which is actually a mouse anyhow, not really a rat. Hence the "false" bit.) The next ferry departed at 10:00 so we twiddled our thumbs for a bit and then finally managed to catch it and make our way over to the island. The plan was to install a simple telescopic mast to the roof of a building. When we finally arrived on the island, we then had to undertake yet another induction, because technically we were working for a separate subcontractor underneath the parent company, so we therefore had to abide by their rules and undertake their safety plans etc.


We sat in the induction room for a while, and 20 minutes later the inductor finally showed up. He attempted to start the induction then found he had left his power point presentation at his other office at the other end of the island. So he drove off and we sat there for another 40 minutes while he got himself sorted. When he finally got back, we went through an hour of the exact same stuff we had already done, and then he gave us stickers to put on our hard hats and sent us on our way.

When we finally got up to the actual work site, the little Indian fellow who was supposed to be running the operation started showing us the building that we were going to be installing on. He walked straight underneath some barrier tape, and I asked him if we were allowed to do that as the induction threatened grave repercussions if anyone was caught walking through barrier tape. He assured me he was allowed, and we began to follow him through. "OI! WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?" a voice bellowed out. Sure enough, the site foreman came striding over and being tearing stripes off this Indian "engineer". Luckily we were sort of half on the boundary so my work mate and I made a hurried retreat before we got caught.

When we finally got that sorted out, we talked to the site foreman ourselves, and he informed us that the cherry picker we were going to use had only just arrived and needed to be certified before we could use it on site anyhow. Then he asked to see our safety plan. I asked Mr Indian fellow where it was, and he informed us that he hadn't organised one, even though he had told us he was going to sort it. Great. 3 hours of handwriting later, we finally had a workable plan. He then informed us that the parent company had to sign off on all safety plans, so that was going to take another day anyhow. We packed up and caught the ferry back to the mainland... no tower for them today.

The next day, we had another crack at it. Somewhat more successful this time, as we managed to go to the correct ferry terminal the first time, and we also had the correct inductions. Some head engineer guy from further up the food chain had made some calls the day before when he heard we couldn't get the mast in, and for some reason there were no problems this time around. We went straight up to the site, our safety plan from the day before had been all signed off and approved, and the cherry picker was ready to go. We got stuck in and 5 hours later the job was done, and we headed back to the mainland.

The next day, I had to go back yet again, to take some photos of yet another building that we were going to be cabling up. I had spent about half an hour waiting for the ferry the day before, and could have easily taken the photos then instead, but of course the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing and I ended up having to make a special trip instead. The lady I was meeting to let me on site (also a Kiwi I might add) was already on the island, but on a different site. Unfortunately there is no way to get between sites yet, and she had to get the water taxi back to the mainland, then catch the ferry with me to go back to the island to the site we wanted to inspect. Apparently she considered swimming but her back pack was too heavy.

Island work aside, I had a fairly simple job to do on Tuesday. Which made a change, as my "easy" jobs usually are anything but. I had to drive to a mine, crimp 6 connectors onto some coaxes on a new shovel, and then drive back again. And, for some reason, that's exactly how it went. No trouble, no hiccups, it all just... worked.

The shovel was an interesting one, it was the first diesel powered one I had seen in the flesh. They basically take a big excavator and reconfigure it to shovel configuration. Twin v16 diesel motors to drive the hydraulics burn around 10,000 litres per 24 hour period at full noise. They were throwing some figures around, something like $250,000 per month to run, as opposed to around $15,000 a month for the electric shovel that it is replacing. A mine further up the road but owned by the same parent company wanted the electric one, and as they were the bigger mine, they got it and left the smaller one with the new diesel one.

Anyhow, I shall leave it there, as I have a small job at work to go and take a look at. While I'm looking at that, you can look at these photos.

TTFN!

Gold dust

G'day.

Well, I am happy to report, mission accomplished. Finally, we have our 10 minute-turned-three week antenna installation completed and working. Strangely enough, the job went very smoothly. The elevated work platform arrived on time, we showed up and barricaded off the area, met up with the guys from Brisbane, signed some paperwork, and got stuck into it. Unfortunately the fellow who had driven 5 hours just to operate the EWP (as he is licensed, and I currently am not) had no clue whatsoever about how to handle this particular machine. I ended up "suggesting" certain levers to push and made him think that it was his idea, and we eventually managed to get the thing where we wanted it. It probably would have been safer to have thrown him overboard and driven the ruddy thing myself really, but he did hold the ticket after all...

The actual job took no more than 10 minutes. When the safety guy from Brisbane showed up we talked him through the job.

"Well, we go up there in the EWP, take that old aerial off, bolt this one on, and then come down again."
"Oh yes, and then what?"
"Uhh... that's it. Job done."
"You're joking. I left Brisbane at 4 in the morning just for that???"
"That's about the strength of it."
"*insert angry sounds here*"

Funnily enough, the original "safety" man who bailed us up was nowhere to be seen, and I later learnt that he had been quietly taken out the back and shot. Not really. But at least he had been taken off the job.

I have another interesting job now, over on an island just off the coast of Gladstone. We have to go out and install a perfectly simple teloscopic mast to the roof of a donga. (Portacom building in NZ speak). We have done several of these in the past with no dramas, but this one is turning into a similar fiasco as the last job. Originally they were all good, then they learned we were intending to use a ladder. Uh, no. Can't do that sorry. Then we submitted alternative plans, and they got it into their heads that the roof wasn't going to hold the weight. So then they wanted engineering diagrams, and they sent it to the building supplier who claimed the building wasn't designed to have masts attached to it... and so on so forth.

It basically comes down to the fact that no body is willing to take responsibility and make the call to actually go ahead, everyone is too busy covering their own arses and passing the buck to someone else. And then they complain that the job hasn't been completed yet. You can't win, I'm telling you. Australia has gone mad with health and safety. If you think NZ OSH is bad... come here and see this. OSH is a walk in the park compared to this stuff. It literally takes longer to do the site inductions and the safety plans and risk assessments than it takes to do the job. We are doing another job for another crowd on the island, we have pretty much a full day of inductions on Monday, and then they still need to see proof of insurance, company statements, drivers licenses and blue cards of all workers, and even CVs to prove you are able to do the work!!! As my boss said, "you are employing my company, not me!"

The blue card is yet another induction you do, which basically says you are allowed to go on construction sites.

On the bright side however, the rest of the week I have managed to get a fair bit done, I have been building up a repeater system for a mine out west which has been pretty interesting. I've just got to undertake final testing and then we should be all good to deploy it.

Work aside, I managed to go and fly a new kite I purchased recently yesterday. It's got a 1.8 meter wingspan and two strings, so you can steer it. After a few spectacular encounters with the earth, I think I've finally got the hang of it. Quite fun to fly, it has significant lift when a gust of wind comes along.

Not much else to report that comes to mind straight away... we have another tech leaving at the end of next week so if anyone knows of any radio techs or installers wanting a job... let me know. Pretty sure we are looking for staff in Rocky and Mackay as well.

Right, I better go and do some grocery shopping, or else I shall be scratching to find dinner tonight.


TTFN!


P.S. What's this I hear about Christchurch getting snow??? That really puts the icing on the quake...

Cloudburn

G'day.

2 weeks since I last scratched together some text, and would you believe, things haven't progressed very far. You may recall a certain easy task we had to carry out, and it turned out to be a bit of a drama? Well, that is still ongoing. At least there is some light appearing through the tunnel! It appears we might actually be able to get this job done once and for all this week... I've finally completed enough paperwork to sink a battleship, covered every possible scenario from snake bite to earthquake, and managed to fly a man up from Brisbane to drive our cherry picker as none of us are "authorised" to use one one site. If it goes pear shaped again this time, Mr Safety really will be scraping the barrel for excuses to stop us. I am hopeful that we might have some success this time, even though all too often, that light at the end of the tunnel is actually the headlamp of an oncoming freight train...

The last couple of weeks have been pretty interesting, most of last week I spent designing and building up a new repeater system for a mine out west. It's a bit of an ongoing project, and I suspect some of the other techs are starting to tire of me having repeaters and the like spread out over a few of the work benches, but I am slowly achieving what I require.

Last Tuesday a few of us attended an "Elevated Work Platform" training course for the day. There was a huge paper exam that seemed to go on forever, but we got to have a bit of a play in a cherry picker so that made up for it. Now I've just got to log 40 hours of use and then I can apply for my ticket.

Wednesday and Thursday were pretty interesting, Dan and I headed to a job in the Byfield forest, just out of Yeppoon. We were installing a remote control camera on top of a mast in the middle of the forest, so they can control it from the ranger station and look for smoke and fires. In the time we were up the tower fitting it, we spotted two, so I imagine that the camera will get quite some use. The fireys went to one of them, but the other was just an old burn off flaring up again. We got the camera end and the wireless control link installed on the Wednesday, then drove back down the road toward Yeppoon to locate our accommodation. We decided to stay at a resort which was close to our work site, but for the money, it probably wasn't worth it. At the reception we asked for two separate beds, and the nice lady behind the counter assured us this was so. (You don't go to a flash resort just to end up top 'n' tailing of course).

We took delivery of our keys and went up to the allocated room. The first thing that became apparent, was that there were no light switches. After finally turning on a bedside lamp, we discovered that there was indeed no lights fitted to the room anyhow. Even with all the mini lamps turned on, the apartment was still as dark as the inside of a cow. The next thing that rapidly became apparent, was the fact there appeared to be only one bed in the place. We hunted high and low, even checked in the room safe, but no bed was to be found. In the end Dan called the reception:

"Hello, Reception"
"G'day, Dan here"
"Oh hello! Did you find your room alright?"
"Yes yes, certainly did!"
"OK then! Is everything to your satisfaction?"
"Well, not quiet. We're short of a bed."
"You asked for two didn't you?"
"Yes"
"And is there not two in that room?"
"No, only the one. Hence that's why I'm calling you and telling you we are missing one."
"I wonder where it's gone. I'll send the porter up!"
"OK then, than.. *CLUNK* ks then... what a rude lady... she hung up on me!"

Anyhow, the porter duely arrived to take us to our next room. We had to go down a level, but at least there were two beds. Luckily the restaurant was still open, so we went to get some dinner. There was sign up saying "bookings essential!" so we went up and asked if we could make a booking. "When for?" they asked... "Well, right now, actually!" As it turned out, it's the off season anyhow, so there were plenty of tables. I tried to talk the waitress into going for a swim with me, but she chicken out, citing that it was too cold. Australians....

Next day, back to the forest, and Dan rigged the tower at the office so we could get the wireless data link going to control the camera. Fortunately they had a nice tall tower there to mount it on. Unfortunately, there were even taller trees right in the link path, and we weren't getting any signal through them. We suspected that it might have been the end of that idea, as usually getting trees cut down in a national park can be quite difficult. They must of been fairly keen to get this camera going though, because half an hour later a fellow arrives with a chainsaw. We marked out the two offending trees, and after performing a risk assessment of course, old mate started hacking away at the wood. Unfortunately one tree in particular wanted to fall exactly the opposite direction to what we wanted it to, so he had to be pretty careful and spent about 15 minutes with the wedges and sledge hammer before she finally came down right on target.

Second tree was already half leaning over, so he just took a big bite out of it and she came down piece of cake. Surprisingly enough, the moment the tree hit the ground the picture sprung to life on the monitor. Hooray, another successful mission for team kiwi.

Anyhow, not much else to report really, I shall leave you with some more photographs.

TTFN!

The world is yours

G'day.

The first thing you may or may not notice is the slightly redesigned layout of this page. Hopefully it proves to be a little easier to read and appears a little more up to date.

Another couple of interesting weeks have flown by, so much to do, so little time to do it. Last week was a week at the mine. That was stupidly busy actually, probably enough work for two men that week. At the end of the day you can only do what you can do, so you do your best and anything that doesn't get done just has to wait.

They had a shovel down for some major maintenance, and whilst it was down they thought it would be a good idea to install some new equipment in it and run some new antenna cables. Of course this then became a task for yours truly, and I spent a large percentage of two days carrying out that task. I ended up having to take the roofing panels out from inside the cab, and luckily managed to con an apprentice to help me out as these are big heavy panels and somewhat difficult to man handle on ones own.

Anyhow, we got the job done, and spent the rest of the week running around fixing minor issues here and there. Friday was an interesting day, usually you try to start a little early on a Friday so that you can get away at a reasonable hour for the almost 2.5 hour drive home again. That was all well and good, until I discovered that I had been tasked to install some new antenna cables into the main office complex building that day. We scoped out the job, and it was a major task. I asked the leading hand for an apprentice to help out by driving a JLG (kind of like a bucket truck without the truck) as I am not currently authorised to use one on the mine site. He ended up giving me 4 apprentices for as long as I required them, so it turned out to be a little easier than anticipated. Two of us went up in the bucket, one was a spotter, and the other two ran the cable internally in the roof, so we managed to turn it into a fairly streamlined performance. As it was, we still didn't finish until three, so had I been doing it on my own I would have been there until Christmas.

Monday I was back in the workshop, and had a bit of a job to go and install a new antenna and cable to the top of a cement silo at a local concrete plant. After we managed to fabricate some necessary metalwork we travelled out and installed it to the silo. I had one drum of the particular cable we needed left, as it was all I had anyway I didn't bother measuring the tower first, we just terminated it and rolled it out. By the time we got right down the silo and into the batch hut, I cut off the excess. Which was precisely 20 centimetres. Pretty lucky on that count, then. Usually with my luck I would have been at least that amount on the short side.

Tuesday I spent in the workshop doing repairs and preparing a special piece of equipment for installation at another mine the next day.

Wednesday I was at said mine installing the specialised equipment. Or at least, attempting to. Unfortunately this had turned into one of those "not much goes right first time" jobs.
(This was the second time I had attempted to install it, the first time the equipment was sent direct to the mine and when I showed up to do it, the cables were missing, the equipment wouldn't fit in the rack, the power supply was the wrong voltage, and a few other minor hiccups. I ended up taking the whole lot back to work to sort it out. )

That aside, I had a new bracket fabricated, all the gear measured to fit, and all the required connectors this time. The first job was to fit the new rack to the trailer in which it was being installed. Except the hinge was a different diameter to sample one I had given the engineers. Luckily my step drill sorted that problem out. Then the hinge pin was too long to fit... So, with the aid of my hacksaw, I managed to sort that one out too. (The hinge is about 20mm stainless solid cylinder... took me flaming ages!) Thirdly, the pins which locate the other side were not lining up with the predrilled holes, so I also had to slot those out to get everything to line up.

Finally getting the rack mounted, I managed to install the equipment with retaliative ease, as I had pre measured that at work. The cables all fitted well, and it went together with no further issue. Until we attempted to mount the aerials, that is. The mine had made an extension to the standard trailer pole, as we needed to have some separation between our antennas. I went to mount the top one, and discovered that the pole was 20mm too short for the top bracket to fit. Because of the design of the pole with the guy points welded on, I couldn't slide the aerial further down. We ended up going back to the workshop and had an extension fabricated. That solved that problem.
Then we went to stand the pole up. The theory was we should be able to pull it up with the guy ropes... but long story short, it wasn't that simple, as the hinge point is about at head height. I won't go into detail as to how we finally got it standing, but if any mine safety inspectors ever see this, of course it was done very safely with no risk to any one at all. Honest.

We then tied off the rope guys to some "star pickets"... waratahs to us Kiwis. Luckily we had an apprentice on hand to drive those into the ground... as funnily enough, when you are driving into a spoil pile made of rocks, you tend to keep hitting... rocks.

I then went to shut the cabinet door so we could leave. "Thunk". Turns out the handles on the equipment hit the door of the trailer... brilliant. So I had to take the gear back out of the rack, and work out a way to unscrew the handles. Luckily it wasn't too complicated and we soon had the door closing properly.

In the end it all appears to be working, we didn't have the required equipment on hand to do real life testing but no doubt we will find out if it's no good.

Thursday was supposed to be a nice easy job, putting up a couple of radio units for a simple data link across a road. We showed up right on 8, expecting the JLG to be ready and waiting... but no sign of it anywhere. We chased up several people and long story short, we ended up having to wait to almost 11:00 before we finally made it into the air to do a 10 minute job. Once we had the roof access, we easily ran the cables and mounted the equipment, and strangely enough, it all worked first time. I think the only setback there was I think we left the drum of cable behind, I must make a note to go and retrieve it at some point...

Friday. Oh yes... Friday. This day put the icing on the cake really. Another data link going in, not a difficult job, should have been as easy as the one the day before. We showed up on site right on 7 o clock. We had a crane there already setup, and the dogbox was on it's way. It would have been a 10 minute job once the dogbox arrived on site. I saw would of, because at that point, the only other person in the building who was there at that hour of the morning walked over and introduced himself as the safety man for that site.

The conversation went something along the lines of this:

"G'day, what are you guys doing with that crane?"

"G'day mate, well, it's quite simple, we are going to nip up there and replace that aerial on the roof."

"What, with that crane?"

"That was the intention, yes."

"Well I'm afraid it isn't that simple."

"Oh it's not difficult, we just hop into that basket, and the crane lifts us up. Quite straightforward really."

"No you don't understand. You see, we don't allow cranes and dogboxes on our sites."

"OK, well this isn't really a site is it... more of a carpark, really?"

"I'm afraid that doesn't matter, our rules still apply. You can't use that crane here!"

"OK then... why's that?"

"Our rules state that it is to be used as a last resort, they are too dangerous! What about that power line there!"

"Interesting, they seem to be safe enough to be used on every other site around here... and the power lines don't come into it, as they are more than 3 meters away at all times and are double insulated 240v, so they are not really a risk to our operation."

"Nope, only used as a last resort. You could scaffold it, so that's not yet a last resort!"


About here the crane driver interjects...
Driver: "Look mate, I know you have a seat to fill and you don't want to lose that seat, I know that you need to justify your job somehow, but let me assure you, this is not a dangerous task!"

Safety Guy: "That may be well and good, and we can go back and forth all day, but I am telling you now, nothing you do is going to make me change my mind."

Me: "We could go and get a helicopter I suppose..."

Safety Guy: "Splutter"

Me: "Righto lads, lets pack up and go... jobs off.


So I ended up back in the workshop for the rest of that day too. Our boss talked to his boss and long story short, their high up overall boss man is flying up from Brisbane next week to have a meeting with me to determine how we can safely undertake the job. I think I shall suggest a crane and a dogbox... and if they don't like that, I might supply him with two tin cans and a piece of string. The dollars they are throwing at a stupidly simple job is just plain ridiculous, this literally will be the worlds most expensive data link if they keep going at this rate.

Anyhow, I will no doubt find out more next week.

As the old Warner Brother cartoons used to say... "That's all, Folks!"

Shot Caller

G'day.

It has been an interesting week, this one. Monday was supposed to be a fairly straight forward day, a nice "easy" job for the local port, or so I thought. Of course, one can never take anything as gospel, and when I showed up it became rapidly apparent that the task at hand may not quite be as simple as first thought. Long story shortened somewhat, I ended up having to return to work to fabricate a bracket and some mounts for the antennas, and locate a cabinet in which to house the equipment. That took most of the morning, and by the time we returned with the gear it was well past lunch time. As I had made sure to measure thrice and weld once, luckily the bracket lined up perfectly and from that point the job went fairly smoothly.

Tuesday started out relatively straight forward too, I went and completed the port job which we had started on Monday. Everything went as it should, which is very unusual for the jobs I usually undertake. However, not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I finished off there and ended up spending the rest of the day aligning some super urgent repeaters which we needed to get out to a job the next day. That took somewhat longer than anticipated, and I didn't end up leaving work until about 10:00 that night.

Wednesday I had a job out at Moura to have a look at a few things for the local coal seam gas company. It was a bit unknown the exact details of what I was going to be doing, as they had several smaller jobs all rolled into one day. I packed as much miscellaneous equipment as I could, and headed out. The job started with some repairs, luckily these were pretty straight forward, mostly broken aerials and that sort of thing. I tackled another couple of jobs, and then decided to get into the main job of the day. This was to get some phone lines connected in an office block which was a good 40 odd meters away from the location of the PABX. I had been told that there was no copper run to the office, so I had come prepared to cable the entire way. Before getting stuck in with laying the cable, I decided to check out the existing panels and see where I could run my cable to. This is when I discovered that there was a panel in there labelled "phones to front office". Feeling an instant ray of hope, but not wanting to jinx the matter, I investigated further and discovered in the front office there was a panel labelled "phones to PABX". Hardly believing I could be this lucky, I tested the lines, and found they were dead. Thinking that it was all over, and I would have to run my cable anyhow, I unscrewed the panel to see where I could terminate my cable. Then I noticed that the cable pairs going to the rear of the panel were on different pins than the ones that this particular phone system required. The old ray of hope started shining again, and I performed some mirco surgery to the panel at both ends. I plugged it all in, and lo and behold, it worked.

I started to become very suspicious at this point, because things never go easily when I look at them, if there is a worst case scenario, you can bet that will be it. But not this time...

Seeing as I then had plenty of extra time up my sleeve, I ended up fixing a telemetry setup for them too, and then eventually hit the road back to Gladstone, a strangely successful mission for once...

Thursday, I headed out to another mine to run some new antenna feeders. We were going to have to use rope access to get to the roof, as the bucket truck wasn't going to reach, and it was going to be a bit of a pig to do. So, I took all the necessary equipment, got on site (and after the obligatory half hour of paperwork) we fired up the bucket truck and discovered that we could get it to within a meter of where we required to work. This made the job incredibly easy, and knocked a good couple of hours off the job time. Aside from the redbacks in the roof, we had no major dramas.
I ended up getting out of there well on time for once, which again, is very unusual...

Friday, I expected the worst. After a week of luck, surely it couldn't last. I hadn't got stuck. The truck hadn't broken down. I had all the parts I needed, the jobs were all successful... it was all too good to be true. Friday's job was a doddle. Or so I had been told. And to add to the day, work was putting on a BBQ at 3:00. All I was supposed to do is drive up to Rocky, show their guys how to put up a telo mast, and drive back again, well in time for the BBQ. Simple. Straightforward. Can't possibly go wrong. Right. Wrong.

I should have known better. I had become complacent. I should have known, "easy" jobs are NEVER EASY. I arose early, and drove up to Rocky. Just before you get to the Rocky office there is a rail crossing tied into an intersection. There just happened to be road works where I wanted to go, and it was down to a single lane with stop/slow men. (Yes, they are exactly like stop/go men, only different). I pulled up to the intersection, and gave way, as there were a steady stream of cars going past. At this point in time, I discovered two very important things. The first thing was, this rail road crossing did not have bells. The second thing was, the "give way" line is past the swing arc of the barrier arm. As I heard the distant "honk" of a large diesel locomotive, I also noticed the barrier arm on the opposite side coming down. I thought "that's unusual, I haven't seen this side coming down yet". There was good reason for that. The fact my roof isn't transparent just about explained it. I realised the imminent danger right at the last second, and only just managed to hurriedly reverse as the barrier cleared my retreating bullbar by only millimetres.

That close call over, I then had to wait 25 minutes before I could get moving again. The train that went through was very long and slow, and after that the stop/slow men let huge rush-hour-train-delayed queues through without thought to let poor old me in to the flow of traffic.

When I finally arrived to the Rocky branch, I needn't have worried about being late. Long story short we spent the best part of 2 and a half hours trying to work out exactly what the job entailed, as the person in charge had decided to take a "personal day" off work. Super convenient. After finally sorting out what the plan of attack was, we finally made it to the actual work site and began work. The job should have been straight forward, but we kept striking little setbacks. For example we had a fellow relatively new to radio comms do the connectors for us on the main feeders. We showed him how to do one, and he terminated 5 or 6 of these cables before we realised the plugs were the wrong gender. We searched the box of bits, and that was all we had. They had been ordered incorrectly. We sent one guy back to get some more correct connectors, and carried on with the rest of the job. A couple of hours in, a lady and half an office came running out and started yelling at us. We went down and asked what all the fuss was about, and it appeared they had lost all their internet and telephones and of course were blaming us. It didn't matter that we were on top of a completely different building, and we hadn't even drilled into the roof cavity yet, but apparently it must still be our fault. We humoured her and went for a look around, and then asked if she had an IT bloke there. In a big display of triumph, she marched us to the IT bloke who then proceeded to explain to her that it was a server issue and nothing to do with us whatsoever. Somewhat deflated, she let us get back to work.

After that, we had several other minor hiccups, but eventually got the job done. Unfortunately by this time it was about half past 5, and I was long overdue for the BBQ. Rush hour traffic in Rocky is mental, and by the time I hit the road back to Gladstone is was beginning to get dark. I finally arrived back at work, after spending 12 hours doing what was supposed to be the easiest job of the week... and the BBQ was long over. I knew my luck couldn't last.


Anyhow, I have a week back out at Moura next week, which should go pretty well. I'll be sure to let you know if it doesn't...

TTFN