It appears another couple of weeks have managed to slip by without me getting a chance to write much here. I've said it once and I imagine I shall say it again, time flies when you are having fun.
Trying to think back to what has actually happened since the last brief update, and I realise it is actually quite a lot. We went out to a mine about 4.5 hours away a couple of weeks back, to put in a new channel which turned out to be semi urgent. It was a complete new site we were putting in, so this meant taking out a new hut on the truck, a new tower on the landcruiser ute, and then a couple of 100 series cruisers with tools and the actual radio gear. At one point that week we had 6 Nixon techs out in that area, the poor old mine probably thought the invasion had come.
It was a fairly straight forward site to put in, I won't go into detail as 90% of the three actual readers of this document will not find it the slightest bit entertaining. I will say, however, that the mine had attempted to "help out", and basically made the job more difficult. They had what in effect was a "spare" tower available, which they decided to pre stand up to try to speed the process. Unfortunately it was the wrong tower for the job and thus we had to remove that one before we could put our new one up. Not only that, but they got the site orientation incorrect so we also had to re measure out the guy points. Luckily, like most mine installs, the guy points are tires filled with concrete, so they aren't too bad to move provided you have a crane handy. Which, as it happens, we did.
Anyhow, that job took most of a week. That week it got colder and colder, and come the Friday there were four of us in our jackets all trying to hide inside this 2m x 2m hut to keep out of the wind. As I was explaining to the Australians, although by Kiwi terms it wasn't actually that cold, I wasn't dressed for the occasion. Where in NZ I would have been wearing 4 layers, here I only had a shirt and a lightweight jacket on, so it felt pretty cold to me.
At least my truck heater worked.
I reckon this winter is a lot colder than last winter here actually, either that or I am just becoming more acclimatised to the insane heat during summer.
Moving along, that weekend a couple of mates were heading down to the sunshine coast, so I decided to tag along as I hadn't been down that way and was pretty keen to see what it was all about. After getting up super early as was arranged.... 2 hours went by before old mate finally showed up to pick me up. Best laid plans of mice and men, and all that. Finally got on the road, and headed toward Brisbane. Got held up at an accident scene at a place called Childers, that slowed us for over an hour, so by the time we actually hit our destination the trip had taken around 6.5 hours. We were staying at a placed called Mooloolaba, which is around 90 KMs North of Brisbane. It was one of those fairly spontaneous trips with not a lot planned, so we managed to get around a little and see some sights. We went to this huge go kart track for a go, cost about $55au for half an hour, but it was pretty well set up. One of my mates got the fastest kart this side of Jupiter and managed to lap me three times. It didn't matter what anyone did, they couldn't keep up with him. Even on the straights he would hare away from everyone and be 10 meters ahead by the end of the straight.
We also went to a driving range to hit some golf balls around. There were about 5 kangaroos hopping around the range, pretty game roos if you ask me. I saw one joey get knocked on the head with a golf ball, he stumbled around a bit like he was drunk and after a few minutes hopped away with his mother. I imagine he will have a lump on his skull for a while.
Unfortunately it was cloudy and overcast and raining on and off a lot of the time, but by Monday it cleared up a bit more and we finally got to see the sun. Which was good, I was beginning to wonder why they called it the "sunshine coast".
Whilst all this was going on, old mate Ryan had been in Sydney buying a new car. The plan was for him to meet us in Mooloolaba and I was going to get a ride with him back to Gladstone. He arrived in Mooloolaba late on Sunday night, and we all went out to a Moroccan restaurant for dinner. All was well and good. He headed off as he had just driven around 1000 KMs, and the others and I headed into town for a while. Next morning, we wanted to get an early start to get back to Gladstone at a reasonable hour. We headed over to where the car was parked in the hotel carpark, and went to start the car. No go. Flat battery, it transpired. After much scratching of heads, we decided to try to crash start the car. No cigar. We developed a plan B, and went and bought some jumper leads. We sent Ryan off on a mission to ensnare some help from a passer by, and he returns with quite possibly one of the smallest cars in the world to try to jump start us. I think he would have had more luck jump starting from a roller skate, but however, we decided to give it a shot.
No go. Of course, that would have been far to easy. We thanked the lovely couple for their attempt at assistance, and while they put their car back into a matchbox, developed a plan C. We removed the battery from the new car, and took it over to a 4WD with a big alternator and jumped it on there for 20 mins in a feeble attempt to get some juice into this pancake flat battery. Still no go. The car would turn over, but not catch. As time was rapidly going by, we determined the next best course of action was probably to call the RACQ into action, as we didn't know anyone else in the town to help out. After paying a modest membership fee, an hour or so later the RACQ showed up. After making much comment about the problem being the fact the car was an audi, he determined that the battery was probably knackered and he suspected the key had probably become unpaired from the immobiliser. We attempted to get onto the audi dealers for key programming instructions, but being a public holiday, no one was at home.
By now it was lunch time, we still had around 5 hours of travel to go, and I had to be out at a mine the next morning. The RACQ said there was nothing more they could do, they suggested staying another night at the hotel and towing it to the audi dealer in the morning. So, long story short, Ryan and his Mrs ended up staying another night, and I (only just) managed to catch a ride back with my other mates which had just left.
So, eventually, the next day they towed the car to the dealership, and they ended up selling him a new battery and fixing up the keycodes and sent him on his way. When he finally arrived back in Gladstone late that evening, he parked the car in the garage, and we thought nothing more about it. Until, about 10 minutes later, we heard a whooshing sound from the garage. We headed out and discovered that the radiator fan was running full tilt. This would explain the flat battery, then. We managed to locate the fuse and solved the fan problem. After performing some research, it appears the fan is run direct off the battery via a thermostat, so we suspect that particular component may well be at fault. Should be a fairly straight forward fix.
New cars aside, this week has been fairly straight forward. A couple of us put up a couple of new 30 foot masts on some stupidly tall workshops, with the help of a 50 tonne slew crane. No major dramas there, apart from a few vital components that were missing. We managed to work our way around that one though. A day in the workshop catching up on bench work on Friday, which was also good. It's been quite a while since I've had a day in the workshop, not that I'm complaining though, I'm enjoying getting out and about and doing some interesting work.
Right, I better carry on and go and do something productive for the day, seeing as I somehow managed to sleep for 13 hours straight on Friday night. I had been running low on sleep all week so obviously it finally caught up with me.
I'll leave you with the customary photographs, and the sound of an audi attempting to start in the garage but not quite firing... not quite all problems solved, then. Next time someone says "I wouldn't buy a Range Rover, they have electrical problems!" I'll reply with "Alright then, can I interest you in a nice Audi instead?"
TTFN
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