June 2 weeks at home

June 20th

No sitting around on the couch in-between appointments and commitments. I decided to redo the fan window inserts. The acrylic half window version had issues and the only fix was a full window replacement. Was thinking aluminium at first but reverted to what I know best, wood.

Two 3mm sheets of plywood laminated together with PVA glue made for a strong construction. Made a template of the glass window insert and cut it out of ply. My jigsaw made the fan vent holes and a spray can of matt black finished the job. The two 12v fans and covers were reclaimed from the V1 acrylic and an in-line plug and socket added for convenience.

The new window insert is held in place by half sliding closed the glass on the insert. The new version does not rattle when driving, a vast improvement from V1. The other benefit is its totally bug and waterproof, no small gaps. 

The Station - Week 3 and 4.

The Station - Week 3 and 4.

The team has changed over. The girls left heading south to continue their touring. Jun a Korean guy arrived late last week and has settled in. A few days later Lee another Korean guy joined us. So we are 3. 

Working some days with the station manager helping him with the dog fence, as his offsiders have had to leave. Other days we clean and refurb 4 foot fences. The work varies, it's good.

It took two days work for a 350m section of dog fence that required complete replacement. On the first day we pulled it down removed the pickets and towed the mesh away to reused as apron on another section. A new end assemble of bore pipe posts and rail was driven in and welded. The grader cleaned the fence line then a new fence was constructed. Not possible to finish in a day so the mesh was stood up with just a few posts for overnight.

Day two on the fence saw us driving in the rest of the bore pipe posts and weld in the stays to a short butt post 2 meters upstream from the next flooding waters. The theory being the stays will help support the fence posts during the high current running hopefully under the 2 meter mesh. The mesh is twitched to a 12mm cable strung from the end assemblies and can swing up during the flooding, supposedly. 

So by the end of day two we had driven in about 100 bore pipe posts and stays, welded the stays to the fence posts and butts and run out about 4 ton of mesh from the back of the truck and twitched the mesh to the support cable every 50cm. Good job done by all. Long days but rewarding. No sheep escaped and no dogs got through.

A wild dog probably chased this one
into a panic and the fence.

The old fence has got to go!

Nice clean fence line.

The mesh all 6 tons of it.

The loader holds the strain
whilst we get to and stand it up.

An example of the stay and butt support
system for the high dog fence posts.