“Beep, Beep, Beep”. Its 5:30am on a Saturday morning, and the alarm has just gone off. There is only one reason someone would set their alarm that early on Saturday morning and that would be a trip to Mt Buller! It was dark, cold and misty and ideal conditions just to stay in bed after a hard weeks work, but as there is no rest for the wicked I jumped in my mates car and headed off for that fluffy white snow. Half way there somewhere around Yea, there was other people fufilling dreams by taking off in hot air balloon just before dawn, it was an awesome site. Forty minutes later we arrived at Mansfield for a second breaky and then headed off to the montain. We as usual arrived as the first lifts open and once at the top were ready for our first run down Burnt Hut. It was a little icy, more than I expected, and controlling my board was a little hard. There was a few things that I could put it down to;

1) First run for the season (the most obvious),

2) Modified bindings, which after getting use to are way better, and

3) It was alot icier than predicted.

After a couple of quick runs down the track we decided to try a few of the runs down the side of Burnt Hut. This is where it was really icy and the run had no mercy. I came off my board and in mid flight thought “ok just relax, there is a pile of snow there to break your fall”. Well that pile of snow was iced over to so it was like a rock! It hurt I got a headache and at this stage didnt realise my shoulder was bring me pain for a whole week. We thought we would try the other side of the mountain and see if that was any better. It was way better with a little powder even, which brought back a little confidence and alot more pleasure. When we stopped for lunch was when i realised that my shoulder was in a bad way, up until this stage my backpack had kept my shoulder strapped in, but once that came off it started to hurt. After lunch we headed back out to the other side of the mountain where we filled in the rest of the afternoon with some wild boarding. By the end of the day I started to feel really exhausted and was glad to be heading back home for a hot bath.

Sunday just gone myself and Zoe thought it would be a good idea to go visit the Point Cook RAAF Museum. We got up and got ready fairly early (for a Sunday) and headed off to Point Cook. I got out the old GPS and plugged it in and as usual it never works (for me), so I cracked the sads and then realised that I don’t have a Melways in the car and have no idea on how to get to Point Cook. After a minute or so I calmed down thought its 9am lets pull into JB HiFi and grab a new GPS. Zoe was trying to tell me that on Sunday shops dont open until 10am, but I wasn’t happy with that and convinced myself that they are open at 9am. Upon arrival I noticed alot of cars in the car park and told Zoe “See, the shops must be open, look at all the cars”. With further analyis I noticed that all the shops did have a sign on saying open at 10am. I looked at the clock and it was 9:30am and the car park was nearly full and so were most of the cars, I couldn’t believe it, why would people possibly want to sit in their car on a Sunday morning and be waiting 1/2 an hour until the shops open. Maybe they were all after GPS’s and were heading to Point Cook. I personally was looking for a Mio GPS but none of the stores had any, so then I thought I would go a Navman, but they were all sold out. Third on the preference list was a Garmin, but once again they were all sold out, so there I was left with only one choice, the most expensive, the TomTom. Without further delay I purchased the TomTom XL and headed out the store and plugged it into the car, and literally was heading off to Point Cook with a few taps on the screen. About 40 minutes later we arrived at the RAAF base where we had to sign in before entering. The museum was filled with some very interesting war equipement from the past and present with some presentation boards explaining what the items were and how they were used. All this took up two hangers and then you were allowed to look in another two restoration hangers wich was interesting too. The air show for the day consisted of one Sopwith Pup which in the end we didn’t bother hanging around for because both of us have both seen one of them fly before. On the way back we stopped off in the main street and had some fish & chips for lunch. Luckily for us it only started raining 10 minutes from home, otherwise it was a nice enough day. Check out the gallery for more photo’s.

Has anyone else replaced a speedo cable on a Hilux? I have and its not exactly easy. Infact I think its one of the trickiest do it myself missions. The speedo cable runs from behind the dashboard to out down under your car into the gearbox. So you have to pull the whole dash out which can be a bit scary, and in my case that included the center console where your radio and ash tray is as well, just to find out that even though the whole lot is in pieces you still have to graze your arm by putting it between the disassembled parts to disconnect the cable. Then you have to follow the cable out to the engine bay which means putting your hands between the engine and the firewall to pull the cable out from the clips and then with a spanner undo the thread from the gearbox. Ok sounds simplish, but once I got it back together with the new cable in the speedo is out, by about 20 kms (under) and for the life of me can’t figure out why. So if anyone with a hilux or has changed a hilux speedo cable and knows what they are doing happens to stumble across this post would be great to hear what I have done wrong!

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Sometime between last 4×4 trip and a week ago I noticed that my front bash plate was missing. I started to search through my 4×4 trip photos, but none of the photos had close up’s of under the front of the car, so I couldn’t make out whether or not it was still on by the end of the trip. It was only when walking back to the car last sunday after food shopping that I noticed something was odd/missing and thats when i realised the bash plate had gone. Getting a new one was more of a challange then first expected. Firstly all the wreckers I visited had barely any Hilux’s to start of with and most certainly didn’t have any bash plates. Then I thought I’ll look into getting an aftermarket one, well that was just as hard as finding one from the wreckers. They all had the 2005 onwards ones but most had stopped making the one I was after. There was one place up in Queensland, so I did keep that in the back of my mind which came to $410 approx (including delivery). The next thing to do was call Toyota themselves and see if they still made them and then see how much it was going to be. Including GST it was just under $500. I was thinking I’m not paying that price. So then I started crawling the 4WD club web pages when I stumbled onto www.hiluxclub.org.au/ and they had a find apart page where it scowers all the wreckers and shops for you and comes back with a responce very quickly. I entered the information Saturday night and I had 2 responces by end of work Monday. For under half the price I drove out to Thomastown this morning to pick up my new (second hand) bash plate. Now I just have to install it.

After several hours on a flight simulator I realised that the right hand controller started to feel funny, slightly loose. Not long after that I noticed that the casing on the control stick had a fracture all the way through and would enable me to pull the stick out. In a short time after that sweat from chronic use of the joystick was enough to pull the stick out of its port. On a simulator it didn’t bother me to much, but if it had of been on a real helicopter things could have been a little different. So in my wisdom I figured I should be able to fix it. So moments later the backing is off. At this point I realised that this radio has been either in a few little bingles or 1 half decent fall eg. off a kitchen table or a garage bench. The rest of the radio had been repaired really well, and now after pulling the whole radio apart know why this one was left how it was. It wasn’t any easy task as their was many screws, couple of springs (which always fall out) and a couple of pins in the way of the resurrection of the joystick. With a little bit of fiddling around, some superglue and a lot of cursing it did manage to go back together. Putting the pin back in place was where most of the swearing occurred as I kept on knocking the spring off. Overall I must admit I don’t think I would have done this on a new radio as there was some fear that I wasn’t going to get it back together again.

Battlefield 1943 is the next game I’m buying. I love my first person shooters, especially online. I started playing battlefield 1942 when it first came out and then started on Counter Strike. Wasnt long before Battlefield 2 was out and then after much persuation I purchased Team Fortress 2 which I’ve been playing madly since I bought my new PC a couple of months back.

Here is video clip of the new and upcoming Battlefield 1943:

Yesterday I purchased myself a second hand Futaba Heli (FF7super) radio, mainly to play a flight sim, but I am looking into buying a helicopter down the track. Thinking this is a good way to start learning as there is less breakage and less credit card action. Looks like I am following in my dad’s footsteps.

Hey there people, Queens Birthday long weekend has come and been. As usual I went 4wd and had a ball, we started at Crowes Hut and headed east to the bottom of the butcher track, which I might add was an awesome little trip with heaps of cool scenery. I will be putting pictures up soon (as soon as I find my camera … Its in the Hilux … somewhere !?!?). We set up camp and pulled down a dead tree and had a massive fire which we also used to cook up some mean grub. I had a steak sandwich and it was bloody beautiful. The next day we packed up and headed up to the butcher track. Now after doing this track I know why they call it that. Towards the top the weather changed so not only did we have a mean track ahead off us we had rain and snow. I was getting a little worried because after 10 – 15 mins of this the tracks were becoming very slippery and I’ve only done a few tracks. About 30 hour on the tracks become rivers and looked very cool, but probably wouldn’t have been if I had of broken down. At the top the weather just got worse and I pulled the pin. The other two blokes stayed to camp in the snow but I was worried that we we’re going to be snowed in and wouldn’t be able to get off the mountain the next day, so I headed off that night and did a bit of a night mission which was fun but visibility in the snow at night was quite a different adventure of its own. Over all It was an awesome trip and would do it again, now looking forward to our next trip.

Hey … Its been a while, but yep I have a job, I’m now working at PowerPax.com.au. The People are friendly and and it’s an easy going enviroment.

Well yep here it is, I have another webpage up. This one is for my business so check it out if you want http://livewiretestandtag.com.