I know, I know. It's been a while. Funny how time gets away on you sometimes... if anyone had told me it was February when I last wrote something on this blog then I wouldn't have believed it.
I shall endeavour to not let myself get this far behind again... as I imagine there was a heck of a lot of stuff going on in the last month or so which will now be forgotten. However, not to worry. As you can probably imagine, we are pretty flat out over here at the moment, as per usual. If anyone knows of any radio techs or installers wanting a job in Aus... send them my way. Seriously.
Well, I can't even recall half the stuff that's been going on since the last update... So I'll just cover a few key points I guess.
We went out to locate a site (that no one could quite remember how to get to) a couple of weeks back, and as it had been raining for a few weeks before hand, I managed to get my 3.2 tonne landcruiser bogged. The ground looked solid as a rock, but unfortunately was completely saturated and with the weight of the truck, we just sunk. We climbed out and started digging, as we didn't have a winch, and the mud was sliding into the holes as fast as we could dig it out again.
After a good few minutes of this, we began to make headway, and it appeared that we were going to be able to get it out after another half an hour or so of landscaping. About at this point, a friendly Australian drove past in a ford laser and mentioned he had a 4WD half an hour up the road and he would be happy to go and get it for us. We told him if he wasn't doing anything, that would be pretty handy. I had all my recovery gear with me, just didn't have another 4WD to tie it to. Our new hero drove off, and we continued moving mud.
About 5 minutes later, old mate shows up again, still in his car. "I've had an idea" he goes... "let's pull you out with this instead!". We advised him that it was unlikely to work, but he was pretty confident and we decided to let him have a crack. Looking back, I should have known better. I mean, the warning signs were all there. The fact he classed his factory tie down points as "recovery" points should have been warning enough. And the fact he grabbed my winch extension strap and tried to explain to me how it was like a giant rubber band should have raised more warning flags, as I then had to show him the difference between a winch extension and a snatch strap.
I offered to load share the strap between both his tie down points with a sling I had for the purpose, but he claimed one would be strong enough. I didn't have the heart to argue with him, so we attached the strap and went back to the drivers seat of my truck to await the recovery. We had plenty of slack in the strap as it was, but he backed up further and further almost to the point where I was going to toot to tell him to stop and ask him what on earth he was playing at. Then, he took off, hell for leather. I turned to my passenger, and in my best Mr Bean voice, I said: "Brace yourself..."
I may have been a bit optimistic, as all we felt was a gentle tug. Luckily, this was enough to pull us a little bit further out of the bog. The only reason this worked even a little bit was because he was pulling us downhill, if it weren't for that fact, I would never have even let him attempt it. At this point I expected him to hop out and assess the attempt, but no, he backed up again and I could tell he was going to give it another crack. Which is precisely what he proceeded to do. This time, after another slight tug, there was this almighty crashing sound. I managed to drive my truck backwards out of the bog, and then jumped out to see what the commotion was. The first thing I noticed was my workmate, who had been standing well back observing proceedings, just about on the ground laughing his head off.
Thinking this was interesting, I turned around to see what he was laughing at, and discovered that our friendly Australian had managed to tear the back half of his car almost clean off. The "recovery" point was now about a meter in the air, and the bumper and boot had followed suit. It had just torn the metal work holding the car together, and completely ruined it. The pictures below should give you some idea.
Lesson learned... never try to recover a stuck truck with an Australian. Uhhh, a ford laser.
We never did find that site... must really go and have another crack at it.
So much other stuff has been going on it's hard to know what to write about. We moved a comms tower at Moura with a crane, fixed several cell sites, microwave links, plenty of bench repairs... and so much more.
I'll skip ahead to the last week, that way I might actually remember what happened and I'll let the photos do the talking for the rest of it.
Seeing as it is Easter, we had a short week. Most of which was spent installing projectors into a school. Whilst the first couple were interesting (the ones installed last year...) these ones were pretty repetitive and not very entertaining at all. Unfortunately however someone has to do it, and this particular occasion happened to include me. We got the bulk of the job done in time, but will have to return next week to put on the finishing touches.
Being Easter, the harbour festival was on this week too. This involved the usual games and rides, and several fireworks. I thought all fireworks would be electronicly ignited now days, but apparently not these ones. I reckon the poor guy running around in the smoke trying to light the next string had a pretty interesting job however.
I had a crack at the .22 target shooting, $5 for 3 rounds was a bit steep, but I enjoy a challenge. Aside from the rigged lighting conditions and rigged sights, all went reasonably OK. The first one was about 1 CM to the right, so I compensated and managed to clip the bull by the third round. Unfortunately this wasn't enough for a prize, so the next day I went back and had another crack at it. This time I managed to group all three pretty tightly, and managed to hit the bull with the third shot. One miniature tiger for that effort, thank you very much. I probably could have bought 3 tigers for the price of the rounds, but it wouldn't have been quite so satisfying.
Anyhow, a 5 day weekend will be about the longest break we get all year that I can think of. We get another 3 day weekend next weekend due to may day or something. When people are offering time off I don't ask too many questions. Gift horses and mouths, that sort of thing.
Right, I better carry on and locate something to munch on for lunch, I managed to get sidetracked halfway through this post so it is possible I have left much out.
Hopefully I'll get back into the swing of things and keep a more regular update going on, if there is actually anyone out there still reading this.
TTFN.
