Fixing cox mic

When we row the cox talks to the crew using a microphone.  There are little speakers in the boat. We had a crackling microphone. 

We were able to ascertain that the problem was where the wire went in the back of the plug. Pretty sure it was not the connections between the plug and the socket on the cox box. 

I thought i would pull it apart and  see if i could fix it.

The plug consists of a hard piece with some kind of over moulded cover that would have been put on after the wires were soldered.  I cut away the soft piece. This showed that the wire was in fact coax cable and the outer had broken.  This actually is a pretty typical way that coax breaks.

I soldered a piece of flexible wire between the two broken bits and included a turn around the cable so that it was flexible.

As i don't have the technology to create an overmoulded "boot" i wrapped the back of the plug with self vulcanising tape.  This is a sort of rubber sticky tape that joins to its self.  Over time it transforms from tape to a big blob.  Over the top i put a piece of glue lined heat shrink.

Then we tried it and it worked.

Oars aint ors

The Oars we are supposed to use at the top ones.  They have fatter handles.  Some of the guys don't like that and prefer the ones in the bottom of the picture.

I am going to ask Croker who are the name brand oars if we can buy just a set of handles and then get the saw out and modify our oars to make them like the other set.

Update:
Had a chat to Croker and they advised that the top oar is a "Concept" oar.  The wood bit we believe goes into the shaft about 150mm.  It will be very hard to extract the wood part and even then the Croker handle assy will not fit in.   A suggestion was to sand / rasp / turn down the handles.
 

Do I feel a G20 coming on

Helping with BGS rowing. Curren gr7's rowing and choppers overhead.

Crap Brisbane Public Transport

P1 Time Capsule

2014 Rocktober

Boys weekend or in my case a Father and Sons weekend.

We gathered at Pauls place near Stanthorpe.

FRIDAY
My original plan had been to drive up Friday morning.  However a "crisis" at work delayed me till 10ish and the rest of the day was spent fixing the motor bike see other posting.  Finally Dan & Mussimo and myself departed round 4:30 I think.

We stopped in at Lewis's place in Warwick for McDonalds suplimented by much much better home made pizza.

Arrived at Paul's place in the darl  Mussimo put up his dads tent so that when his dad arrived (close to midnight) that their family could just crawl into bed.

SATURDAY 

SUNDAY
AM - Walked up castle rock.
PM - Canoeing at Storm King Dam.

MONDAY
Packed up.  Drove home.

More photos here
https://drive.google.com/?tab=Xo&authuser=0#folders/0B4ydfm9DZtASRzAwbEpXaE5EQ28

Booloumba ck story

we had organised with Geoff to camp on his land at Booloumba creek.  To access his land, one enters via the neighbours land. Unfortunately the creek was impassable.  Thankfully the neighbour, a wonderful lady was happy for us to camp on her land.

We was Megan, Frank, Christ, Dan, Jemma and the Horky family - Frank, Gergina, mussy, Ethan & Dom.

We set up the tarp and Jemma dug a hole for the toilet.  The kids put up their dome tents.

Booloumba Creek Camping