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!"