Outback IT Service

The trip to Brisbane & Lightning Ridge didn’t eventuate, because it would cost too much in fuel, but we are looking forward to a week off to do some cruising around closer to home. The generator has been serviced, which makes us fully self-contained, but we will probably stay in campgrounds with power anyway. I have also added a webcam, powered by a laptop whose screen effectively died. Now that it has VNC installed for remote control, I don’t need to see its screen. See the image to the right for what it looks like out through the windscreen.

The house batteries are in, charged & ready to go. The Telstra NextG Broadband Wireless account has been changed over to use a new BigPond Elite Home Network Gateway, which translates the mobile broadband signal into a local wifi area, so that we can all get online with our laptops. Just waiting for the delivery of an external antenna, which hopefully will expand our range when we hit the boonies.

Meanwhile, more trips. Next one is to Grenfell over the June long weekend, followed by 11-12 days on the road during the July school holidays to Brisbane & Lightning Ridge. Should be a good test of all of our systems.

We are now finally clear of the debt that we incurred when we bought the bus. It has taken the sale of all 7 of our investment properties to get to this point. We are still deep in debt, but at least that one is out of the way.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I now know what it takes to change a tyre on the beast & most of the effort uses lots of leverage. We had some rather nasty problems with the failure of the regulator causing the truck batteries to overcharge (hydrogen gas smells REALLY bad), which has been fixed. We need new house batteries, as the existing ones are now 6 years old & fading rapidly.

We have become active in the local CMCA Chapter, attending most of their outings this year. Being elected Secretary kinda pushed the issue a bit.

We pull the bus out every couple of weeks to keep everything working & generally go away about once a month.

Two trips to Melbourne later & with the LPG conversion in & working, we are slowly moving ahead. We learn something new every time we take the bus out on the road, from little things like remembering to turn the Bluetooth on the mobile phone, on before driving & off when finishing, right through to the drain that towing the Sierra puts on the power to weight ratio. We’ve struck a few hills that had us unexpectedly crawling up in second gear.

After failing to find any service stations with a compressor capable of delivering the necessary pressure to our tyres of 100 psi cold, I invested in a small but sufficiently powerful compressor, a length of air hose & a package of fittings, & finally got them pumped up properly. When I discovered that the wheel nut socket is a monster 41mm beast with a ¾” shaft, suitable for a rattle gun, the next purchase was a rattle gun & socket set, with a ½” to ¾” adaptor. Still waiting for the adaptor to come in, to see how that lot performs on the wheel nuts!

I continue to receive encouraging responses to the whole Outback IT Service idea, but as we are still selling properties to pay off the debt (3 down & 3 to go), as well as hosting an exchange student from Finland this year, I think we’re still on track for a 2011 escape. The good news is that we both sleep better, are more relaxed & probably healthier when we are on the road. Meanwhile, more test runs. And more thinking about what sort of computer spare parts I would need to be carrying when we do finally head on out for real.

We had the weekend at Majors Creek recently for the Music at the Creek Festival. It was so relaxing to be surrounded by music for 2 whole days. And while there were people getting drunk, I did not hear a single angry word in the whole time that we were there. Lesson learned on this trip: Park the bus where the front windscreen is in the shade & the solar panels are in the sun, not the other way around.

I have had problems with 240V the inverter bringing up an alarm condition, which was eventually traced to a voltage drop when the 12V fridge kicked in. I found an excellent article here on fault-finding for the fridge & then decided to check the batteries. Apart from corrosion on one of the terminals, I was horrified to find that all of the cells in all 4 of the batteries were dry! It took 8 litres of distilled water to top them up. I now have it on mains power to bring them up to fully charged in preparation for a week on the road.

And the bilge blower mentioned in the previous post has been installed & it does a fantastic job of pushing the hot air out of the locker bin. My very grateful thanks to Frank for cutting the exhaust hole in the steel plate floor & helping me to bolt it in.

Meanwhile I got a quote for an eCoShot LPG addition to the diesel engine from Ace Gas in Queanbeyan, with the work to be done when we get back from Melbourne.

Our progress towards setting up this service has been slow & painful. We ran into financial problems & have effectively traded 5 of our properties for the motorhome. And we have also decided that our escape date is probably at least 2 years away. How does 11/11/11 sound?

Meanwhile, there are things to be done. Upgrades to [...]

I have been spectacularly impressed by a product known as ReImage. According to their “how does it work” information, they analyse a Windows XP installation, figure out the pieces that are missing & plug them in from downloaded files, to produce a working version again. Even machines that have XP so damaged that they will not [...]

We finally collected the rig in late April & took 5 days to drive it home to Canberra. Picture shows Julie christening the BBQ in a park in Narrabri, with the baby 4WD attached via an A-frame, just visible at the back. We are delighted with our purchase & feel honoured that we will be able [...]

Just to put our potential territory in an international perspective:

Take all the US states north & west of Memphis, with a temperature range between Oklahoma & Costa Rica.

Or all of mainland Europe up to & including Poland & Bosnia, with a temperature range between Syria & Djibouti.

Is that a bit scary? Ah, yeah. See for yourself [...]

If you are one of our potential customers, this is what you are likely to see coming down your driveway!

Other links:

The family website.

The [...]