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!
