Mark's Stuff

True to form with my most recent car, a VZ Holden Adventra LX6, its taken only a matter of months before pulling apart the interior panels to add some more electronics.

This effort is nowhere near as obstrusive as the Jeep’s home grown touch screen PC/media player/GPS, and I’ve tried to keep a factory look and feel as much as possible.

The bits that I’ve added are:

• Nokia CK-7W bluetooth car kit
• GME Electrophone TX-3400 UHF Radio
• RFI AP-454 glass mount antenna
• UDC Holden iPod interface

I actually installed the bluetooth kit a few months ago. A pretty straight forward install. I just bought the factory button from a local Holden dealer and attached a new plug into the wiring loom that’s sitting under a panel at the passenger’s right leg.

The 2.5mm socket above the phone button is for the phone charger. Good for those long weekends away! Its a bit unfortunate that the phone is upside down, but I wasn’t bothered trying to find if they also make one the other way up.

Last week I received my iPod interface from Vlad (http://udc.aus.googlepages.com/holden) and took to the factory head unit with a screwdriver and soldering iron to add seamless iPod support.

The only thing I did differently to Vlad’s recommended install was the way I routed the cable. Instead of cutting the cable and running it through to the arm rest compartment, I removed the centre console, drilled a 13mm hole, and threaded the mini din plug that comes with the kit through to the back of the head unit.

The insert to the compartment has only got three sides, which you can sort of see in the picture, It also has a false bottom, so its easy to drill out a hole big enough for the mini din plug through the console base, and then just check out a 5mm hole for the wire in the bottom of the insert. The compartment insert is screwed in from the bottom though, so I had to remove the centre console to get to it.

My Nano fits perfectly, but I’m not sure if the bigger iPods will fit nicely here.

And a close-up:

Last but not least was the CB install. This one was a little fiddly because of the tight space I tried to fit it in. Ideally it would have gone into the compartment above where it is now, but the radio was about 10mm too wide. I was going to take a few more photos of the iPod cable run, but that would mean removing the CB to get the console back out.

The GME Tx-3400 is a remote-head radio, so the main part of the CB is tucked up underneath the glove compartment. That caused the sound to be a bit muffled, so I used the external speaker that came with the Nokia car kit (The car kit audio routes through the radio speakers) and mounted it just behind the centre console. Much better sound!

Well I guess it should be fairly obvious.. you shouldn’t drive it upside down! We came across this unfortunate scene just outside The Rip at Port Phillip Heads en route to dive the Rotomahana. We’re unsure exactly how it happened, but suspect it was the driver trying to pull the anchor up while it was attached to the stern of the boat. Add to that an oversized 250HP outboard on the back, and the owner is lucky that the boat was eventually righted and towed to shore. We offered some assistance by way of a couple of divers suiting up and jumping in to try and free the anchor line, but eventually let the water police (nice jetskis, eh?) and port authorities take care of it, and we headed off to the Rotomahana.

The SS Rotomahana lies in about 40m of water, and although there is not much left of her, she still boasts two massive boilers which make for a cruisey little swim through, and there’s still quite a bit of the deck structure remaining, albeit rather broken up. And of course abundant fishlife. But at 40m, and Justin and I not diving with a deco mix, we had about 20 minutes bottom time, a 10 minute ascent to 6m, and a further half hour of thumb twiddling at the shot-line washing off deco obligations.

After the Rotomahana, next stop was a quick drop-off at Portsea for a fill, while Ocean Diver headed back to Sorrento to pick up some more passengers for Anchor Wall and he Arches. The wind and swell picked up a bit so after Anchor Wall we couldn’t head back outside the heads. The alternative was a rather slow scallop drift just off Rye. Having never had the urge to take a photo of a scallop before, I took this pic which shows quite nicely how this stingaree and scallop have buried themselves for camouflage from natural predators. Like divers.

And as usual, a few more pics in my Melbourne Diving gallery.

This Queen’s Birthday Weekend I headed up to Mt. Gambier to finish off my last required dive for my CDAA Deep Cavern certification, which I completed in Little Blue on Friday morning. On Saturday Jake and Ellen took me on a guided tour of Piccaninnie Ponds, which was a treat after fudging around in the 1m visibility of Little Blue. Jake and I dropped into Ewen’s Ponds after that, but unfortunately on the tail end of about 20 other divers, so the water was a little stirred up.

My weekend finished on Monday morning at Kilsby’s, with this trip’s second awesome dive at that hole in the middle of a sheep paddock. I tagged my camera along for a couple of the dives, but my photos just don’t do the dives justice. Definately more practice required at this sort of photography. And maybe another strobe wouldn’t hurt either!

Over the last two weekends my dad and I have been hard at it with shovel and barrow attempting a Backyard Blitz in our backyard. We got half way there; the cleanup is pretty much done, now it just needs a deck and some landscaping. I should have taken some before shots, at the very least to see what a difference all our hard work made!

Last weekend we pulled up a heap of bricks that were laid as pavers, and also broke up the concrete slab from the old laundry/shed. We also took off about 150mm of dirt where the deck is going to be, to allow enough clearance for the bearers. The deck will be the full width of the yard and will come out to around where the bike is.

Our efforts last weekend filled the first 3 cubic metre bin in the space of two hours. The next one lasted a bit longer as the day wore on, and the wheel barrow seemed to get heavier and heavier. On Sunday we hired a jackhammer to break up the foundations of the slab, and that finished up the bin.

This weekend I gave up on the 3m bin, and went straight for a 6m one. More bricks to lift up and shift into the bin, but we gave ourselves a little break every now and then by shifting a few barrows of tan bar. Much lighter than bricks. The tan bark was a good idea when we first moved back in, with the aim of keeping the mud and dust down. But the stuff sticks to Connie (our King Charles Cavalier) like glue, and end up all through the house.

We also demolished the temporary lean-to shelter that I built for the boat about three (maybe four) years ago. That lone tree in the middle of the yard will go soon, but I first wanted to wait until we’ve got at least a little greenery in the form of those trees along the wall. It was rather satisfying to make that planter box – actually doing something constructive after two weekends straight of shovelling bricks, dirt and rubble! The mound of dirt around the tree at least shows how much dirt we took out of the backyard – the whole yard used to be level with the top of the mound.

After only about 18 months of trying to get a on a course I’ve finally managed to find a time where my schedule matches the course schedule, and I’ve started my CDAA Deep Cavern course. After three evenings going through theory and practising some line work in the shop, yesterday was the first pool session with instructor Jane from A.B. Ocean Divers.

Kira, Ed and myself spent the better part of two hours running line between milk crates sitting on the bottom of the pool, whilst Jane did her best at task loading us, including simulated OOA scenarios, simulated zero vis (blindfolds over masks and taking off masks), crossed lines and loose lines.

As this was the first time any of us had dived together, and we didn’t really get much time to discuss communication beforehand, there was some confusion going on, but for the most part I think we managed ok. It also didn’t help things out when our sequence was changed for every exercise. Certainly something to be discussed at length before getting wet at Mt. Gambier next weekend!

I definitely have to say that the GUE Fundamentals course I did last year went a long way to preparing me to be a lot more comfortable and confident with what the rest of this course is no doubt going to bring.