I don't know what's going on but I'm very concerned, you'll remember some posts back I mentioned my Amateur Radio transceiver, the mighty ICOM 756 ProII. Such a superior wireless that utilises a high level of computer control which I can quite frankly say is the closest way to make Amateur Radio communications interesting, to me.
The Mighty ICOM 756 ProII
I Did in fact have a loan of an Alinco DX77 for a few months but I only switched it on a few times and managed to get one dx contact VE7RAC when I heard them show up late at night on the forty meter band I think, surely a Canadian station there operating in a competition that I had no idea of the rules of, so I replied to him just to see if I could get a signal report. But frankly after having the wide array of controls of the ICOM 756 it just wasn't much fun, to me. And I was not enthused to keep the wireless running like I usually did with the ICOM 756, I mean the radio amateur purists love their equipment and their operations and that's fine, but I really don't get much fun out of radio unless there's something weird going on, like operating the ICOM 756. And it can certainly land those DX stations without too much effort.
Anyhow to return to the matter at hand, I remember I had operated the VK/Trans Tasman eighty meter contest from the top of a cold mountain out back of Maitland, where I grew up, but even at that time the ICOM had a problem, the automatic memory controlled antenna tuner built into the wireless had failed and I had to operate with an external manual tuner, it's a major crippling of the transceivers overall capability so the next week the adventure continued as I took the ICOM back to Lee Andrews communications, a fine establishment, to leave the ICOM for repair or replace under warranty.
So this was the adventure, to get the 1977 Mini Cooper down the highway and through the traffic of Sydney, this is always a pretty epic journey in the 1977 Mini Cooper as you have to go flat out for the highway then go into heavy city traffic, something that always is a problem with overheating what with the east-west type engine in the Mini. And running sustained high turns for the hours flat out on the highway sections is definitely the most intense test of endurance for the newly rebuilt 1275cc engine and with any breakdown from here to Sydney and back always meant you were stuck on some main road with often no hope of getting the vehicle to a safe place by one man pushing. These are the circumstances that led me to call for a passenger on this adventure, my consulting minister, a man of faith, we'll call him Pater Bob, And also he had a mobile phone.
All this radio equipment but I cannot afford even a mobile phone, I can't even afford to call one let alone own one.
I was also very curious to see how the gps/aprs tracking system would work down and around Sydney. It worked well once out of the mountains and in range of the Sydney receivers and gateways. You can see the coverage in the log from that day with rough map from APRSworld by pressing the posting heading for this blog entry above.
At any rate I loaded the wireless and Pater Bob into the 1977 mini and we spilled out on to the streets, hit the highway and hammered it up to 120 kph for extended periods, till we hit the twin service stations where I pulled up to check the engine before we hit the point of no return on the way to Sydney.
Pater Bob took the chance to do some good works for his fellow man by means of his cellphone while I cracked the bonnet. Everything was basically ok, there had been no problems apparent on the road, good temperatures and pressures, and inspection showed no loss of coolant and the expected rate of loss of oil.
As we were going to leave I told Pater Bob not to panic and pointed out the oil that had started to be blown out of the carbon crankcase ventilation canister as while it was not a good thing to be happening I didn't think it would cripple the vehicle, so we headed off onto the highway again for the long run to Sydney.
I took the mini up over 120 kph several times, and the mini showed no difficulties and before I knew it we had arrived at the end of the highway and were dumped into the Sydney traffic.
Again, no problems, the 1977 Mini handled the traffic, it was quick off the mark from the lights, it was nimble amongst the traffic and it stopped when needed well due to the disc brakes fitted to it. The best way to make a mini behave more like a normal small car is to fit the disc brakes and 12 inch wheels.
Getting through Parramatta was accomplished easily and we arrived at Lee Andrews communications Shop in Greystanes and thereupon arriving dropped off the ICOM 756 wireless transceiver for repair under warranty.
Whole job done with no problems so far. Pater Bob, being a gun enthusiast, suggested we continue on to Horsley Park gun shop one of the larger of the gun shops left in the country what with the continuing outlawing of guns in this country.
I agreed as there was no reason not to keep driving now the mini had come this far and I had never seen this gun shop Pater Bob spoke about so we drove on. I hadn't driven into Sydney much and certainly not this area and started to run into road construction where they were building interchanges with 3 roads on top of one another, "what the hell is this, this cannot be" I started to panic as I saw these things but drove on to Horsley Park where we parked and went to the gunshop.
Pater Bob wanted to show me a 1911 pattern handgun, this is Pater Bobs favorite gun especially in .45 caliber which is now illegal, and he basically hassled the gunshop salesman to pull one out of the vault. Pater Bob had to start talking about spending money on one before the salesman brought two out and Pater Bob proceeded to operate the mechanism of the gun and examine it completely in such a way as I could see all of the mechanisms of it from standing beside. All very interesting, I could see he wanted to strip down to it's components on the sales counter but I concurred with him that the salesman would not have been happy about doing that.
So, we headed off onto the highway again. Pater Bob knowing the area told me he knew where we could get food, food was good I thought, but we had missed the turnoff from the highway and it was not really possibly to turnoff further on, but we were stopped at a big set of lights, four lane highway in all four directions. I was baffled but Pater Bob as my consultant minister suggested making a U-turn in the intersection when we got favorable lights. It was not easy but I made the U turn and ended up heading in the right direction for food stop without incident, no collisions, no police. I ceased panicking by the time we hit the macdonalds Pater Bob was guiding us too.
Purchasing food at the roadside macdonalds I noticed Pater Bob grab about a one hundred and forty four competition forms that were near the door, which I thought was very strange, but as we ate he spent about an hour making technical drawings of how the 1911 hanguns were constructed on the back of aforementioned forms, everything he couldn't show me by disassembling one in the gunshop. So it's clear to you all now how much of a 1911 enthusiast Pater Bob is.
Anyhow, topped up the oil as the 1977 Mini had cooled down a lot and off again, to complete the run home, which was fully uneventful except for only barely making it to the fuel station near the end of the highway run. Pater Bob's prayers as the fuel gauge had been below zero for some time may have helped I don't know.
So it's three months later now and still no sign of my ICOM 756 being repaired. I have the receipt for it being put in for repair so that's somewhat comforting, but I'm very concerned none the less. The technician repairing in has emailed me to tell me yes he ca see the problem, the fault is not an obvious one, he has got the workshop menual for it now.
But as a test of the 1977 Mini Cooper too Sydney and back it was an excellent run. There ended up being no problems at all. It could do it again except for the cost of fuel.
Be,seeing you.
