High Octane Photos

ReplayXD 1080 POV Camera

2011-10-11T12:46:00.000+08:00

I've been interested in doing some in car video work for some time, and in the past I've experimented with a Canon Legria FS-200 and a Camzilla mount(you can check out that post here). Recently I came across the ReplayXD line of cameras, in particular, the ReplayXD 1080. After checking out some footage of the Poteet and Main streamliner at Bonneville, and a number of other videos on the web, I decided that I had to have one of these cameras.

I've now had the camera in my possession for a little over a week, and have yet to put it inside a race car, instead I've been testing it out in my daily driver, a VN Calais. The results so far are fairly promising, with the Camzilla clamp and ReplayXD 1080 combination proving very stable (on a road car at least). I've put a couple of videos up on YouTube, which are most likely not going to be of much interest to anyone, but they give you an idea of the cameras capabilities. (That said, I have yet to start tweaking the advanced settings, which may yield some further improvement)

The video above is also a drive through of the roadworks currently in progress to widen the Kwinana Freeway from Leach Highway to Roe Highway. The road works to date seem to have focussed on moving the traffic away from work areas, starting with narrowing the lanes to provide room to work safely on the side of the freeway itself, and lately there has been work to modify the on and off ramps to move traffic away from where work will be done on to realign those ramps to suit the new freeway width. So far, I have to say, the traffic is flowing remarkably well in both directions, with a permanent 80kmh speed limit in place until the road works are complete, during the peak times, the traffic is moving just as well as it did before the roadworks commenced.

The last video on this page is taking the ReplayXD 1080 away from it's comfort zone. I had the camera in the Camzilla clamp, resting on the wall of the Hankook Tyre Snake Pit at the Perth Motorplex. Between taking photos of the burnouts, I would move the camera to suit what was going on out on the pad. Night performance has always been the biggest challenge for a POV camera, and using the camera as a handicam makes it even more challenging, so this is a chance to see what could reasonably be expected to be the worst footage you'll get out of one of these cameras. All up, I'm quite happy with this purchase, between the clamp and the camera, I have less than $450 invested in the setup, thanks to the strength of the Aussie dollar in recent months.

I Have A Dream...

2011-05-11T19:58:00.000+08:00

...and for now, that's all it is. The dream involves a black MA70 Supra that I have sitting out the back of my house, a 1JZ-GTE and 7 miles of salt. My rather long term plan is to develop the car into a F/BGCC car, in laymans terms, a 2.01 - 3.00 litre blown gas competition coupe, or in other words, a turbocharged, stretched bodied car, running petrol. This is one of those plans that will take years to come to fruition, as it's rather ambitious, especially now that Mikah is on the scene.

Before I get anywhere near that, I plan on running the car as a /BGC car, which basically means it would have a much more stock appearing body on it. And if that is to come to fruition, it in turn means that I'll probably have to pack the car into a trailer before the Westernationals one year, and send it towards Lake Gairdner, for the DLRA's SpeedWeek event, flying out myself just after the Westernationals in order to catch up with the car and head out to the salt.

Mind you, before I even get anywhere near that point, the car has a little panel damage, mostly front end damage, that needs to be fixed. Once the front end is fixed up, I can put a new windscreen in the car and start work on turning it into a race car. Having only ever driven on the salt in the Cadillac so far, I'm planning on putting this beast together as a fairly tame number in it's first incarnation, in order to get to grips with the low levels of traction available on the salt, hence my plan to run the car in a much more 'stock' class to start with.

Cars and Guitars

2011-04-29T11:58:00.001+08:00

Well, that was a very busy, and rather enjoyable, weekend. The Easter long weekend coincided with ANZAC Day in Australia this year, seeing two of the regular end of season events at the Perth Motorplex on the same weekend, the Hankook Tyres Burnout King on Good Friday and the Holden vs Ford drags on ANZAC Day. Between those two events, the Motorplex hosted a concert on Easter Saturday, headlined by ZZ Top and Rose Tattoo with support from local acts Datura and The Joy Evelation.

The Holden vs Ford and Burnout King events are pretty much a regular feature on my calendar these days, but the opportunity to see one of my favourite bands in action at one of my favourite venues was what had my attention over the weekend. I'd been in discussions to organise media accreditation for myself for some time, and finally got the good word on Saturday morning. Having not shot a lot of concerts before, this was always going to be a challenge, and something that I was really looking forward to.

This was the first time I'd experienced 'the pit', that part of the venue between the stage and the crowd, a little over a meter wide, where the accredited photographers can find some space to work. Many acts choose to limit the time that the pit is open to photographers to a couple of songs, and this concert was no exception. While this may seem to restrict us a little, I think it also helps, as in the case of ZZ Top, Billy Gibbons seemed to be paying attention to the shooters in the pit during those couple of songs, and there are definitely a couple of keepers in my shots from that time.

After the time in the pit was over, I headed back into the crowd to hang out with Kate, and switched to a longer lens to grab some more shots, mostly with two, or all three, members of ZZ Top in the frame. Another part of the challenge in shooting concerts, is that almost 100% of the time, flash photography is banned, meaning you're relying on constantly varying stage lighting, which can be good and bad, sometimes at the same time. While there are often some cool colour effects, you're always chasing the right exposure settings, and when you get it right, there's certainly a sense of achievement to go with it.

On the subject of gear, I shot the whole night with my Canon EOS 1D Mk III, using a Canon 24-105 f/4.0L IS lens for most of the night, and switching to a Canon 70-200 f/2.8L (non-IS) lens for the latter portion of ZZ Top's set.

I don't think I ever doubted that I'd enjoy shooting my first concert, and it's certainly something I'll be keeping an eye out for the opportunity to do it again some day, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Mikah

2011-02-24T09:51:00.001+08:00

Three months ago, Kate and I became parents to a wonderful little girl, Mikah. I have been meaning to write something about our experiences since that day, and somewhere along the line I decided to wait until our little girl was three months old to do so.

Mikah joined us at 4:42pm on the 24th of November, 2010. Looking back now, she had given us indications of her imminent arrival the night before, and Kate started having some good strong contractions around midday on the 24th, ironically, on her way home from a check up at King Edward Memorial Hospital (KEMH). At around 3pm, I received a call from Kate, asking me to come home and take her to KEMH, as she thought she was going in to labor. After an eventful trip home and up to KEMH, I dropped Kate off at the hospital doors just after 4pm and went to find a carpark. As I made it upstairs to where Kate was, the midwifes and doctors were examining her to find out if she was actually having a baby or whether there was some sort of problem with little Mikah that was causing the contractions. They didn't take long to come to the conclusion that Kate was about to have a baby, and quickly located an empty birthing suite for us to use. After a little over 20 minutes of the usual grunting and groaning, pushing and squeezing, our little baby girl was born. It was shortly after this that Kate's family arrived and got to meet the new addition to the family, who at that point still did not have a name. It ended up taking us around 3 days to come up with a name for young Mikah, and we're quite happy now that we took our time, and came up with a name that is not only fairly unique, but is also very special to us.

Since Mikah's birth, 3.5 weeks ahead of schedule and weighing in at only 2.885kg, we've had the extreme pleasure of watching her grow and develop over the last 3 months. She's now weighing approximately 5.5kg, is becoming more aware of her surroundings and starting to grab at toys. She's still a little too young to be crawling or talking at this point, but is trying to roll over on occasion and will make crawling motions if placed on her belly (most babies will do this anyway, it's a standard reflex). Her neck strength appears to be improving and she will hold her head up and look around every now and then. She also appears to have taken a liking to a particular photo I've had printed from our last trip to the United States, a shot of a Nostalgia Altered mid-burnout at Famoso Raceway in Bakersfield, California.

Over the last 3 months, we've introduced Mikah to many new people and experiences, most of which she's probably oblivious to, but no doubt these will shape her life in some way in the future. Mikah's already been to several major drag racing meetings at the Perth Motorplex and gotten up close and personal with Robin Judd's Top Doorslammer and Darren Morgan's Top Fuel Dragster. She's been to see drifting at Wanneroo Raceway, and partied like it's the 50's at Mike Naylor's 50th birthday party. I'm already looking forward to the day when we can take Mikah travelling with us, and trying to work out how old I want her to be before we take her to the USA with us, which will be a delicate balancing act if we're going to continue driving old cars with unreliable air conditioning through some of the hottest parts of the United States.

New Car Time

2011-01-10T08:56:00.000+08:00

Having recently become parents, both Kate and I have come to the realisation that our previous daily drivers weren't very well suited to carrying a little baby around. Kate's R32 Skyline GTS-T and my JZA70 Toyota Supra, having only 2 doors, are not only cramped in the rear seat, but it's far from easy to load a baby seat over a folded down front seat. The Ambulance on the other hand, has plenty of room in the back, but no seats or baby restraint mounting points. As a result, we've had to find a couple of replacements.

I had my eye on this VN Calais from the moment it pulled up out the front of work a few weeks ago. Traded in by an elderly gentleman, it's in very good condition for it's age and the kilometres traveled.

The beauty of this car is that there's nothing particularly special about it, it's just a nice clean, very stock (it's got an aftermarket radio), '89 VN Calais with the then new 3.8 litre Buick V6 and a 4 speed automatic transmission. As far as my plans for this car, my only intentions are to keep it in as good a condition as it is now, or to restore it slightly, depending on availability of the parts required. It's not getting any go fast bits at all, at least not until all the other projects I have underway are completed.

2010 GoodFella's Yanchep Picnic

2010-11-17T14:22:00.001+08:00

The GoodFella's Yanchep Picnic is one of the newer events on Perth's automotive calendar, and for Hot Rod, Kustom and Muscle Car fans, it's one not to be missed. The Picnic is an event exclusively for pre-48 Hot Rods as well as Kustoms and American Muscle up to 1978 model cars.

The Picnic is preceded by a cruise from the Kingsway Shopping Centre, on Wanneroo Road, to the Yanchep National Park, the venue for the Picnic. Over 250 cars made it onto the lawns behind the Yanchep Inn as part of this years GoodFella's Yanchep Picnic.

There are no trophies at the GoodFella's Yanchep Picnic, just a relaxed day on the lawns with plenty of shade and a couple of barbecues, and maybe a bottle of wine for the "Publicans Choice". The GoodFella's also organise a raffle, the prizes for which are donated by sponsors from throughout Perth's hot rodding community, regardless of club affiliations.

You can check out a preview gallery of photos from the GoodFella's Yanchep Picnic on LandBarge.com, and the full gallery will be available on HighOctanePhotos.com shortly.

2010 Western Hot Rod Rumble

2010-10-26T11:35:00.003+08:00

Sunday, October 24th, saw the first running of a new event at the Perth Motorplex, the Western Hot Rod Rumble. This event differs from other previous Nostalgia and Retro themed events in that it was exclusively for pre-1966 vehicles. Other events in the past have accepted entries from vehicles up to the early 1980's in order to fill the staging lanes. With the new cut off for vehicles, entries were down overall, but entries of hot rods appeared to be up on previous events.

In addition to the 35 cars entered for racing for the day, at least another 50 eligible cars were parked in the pits, along with numerous classic cars that were within a couple of years of meeting the pre-1966 cut off for racing. During the break between qualifying and eliminations, all the steel bumpered cars in the pits were invited out for a cruise along the return road and back down the Motorplex drag strip, regardless of whether they met the year cut off to race.

The Western Hot Rod Rumble was a really cool, laid back event, and one that I would love to see continue in a similar fashion for years to come. While it didn't have the huge entry numbers of some other events at the Perth Motorplex, the atmosphere around the place was one that could not be ignored.

I am still sorting my photos from the day, but in the meantime, you can find a preview gallery of some of my photos from the Western Hot Rod Rumble over at LandBarge.com.

Update: I've now finished sorting the full gallery of photos, and uploaded it here.

The Pre Season Test'n'Tune Season

2010-10-16T23:07:00.001+08:00

Over the last couple of weeks, I've had the privilege of attending 3 private track hires at the Perth Motorplex. These are events for a very small number of cars (usually 10 - 15 cars at the most), all ANDRA licensed cars and also usually full of very keen racers, as the cost of hiring the track for one of these days is around $6000.

The first of these events I attended this season was organised by Maurice Brennan, a local Top Comp competitor, set on a path that will take him to Top Doorslammer competition when the time is right. Maurice had hired the track to test his Holden Commodore based Doorslammer, and to help keep the costs of the day down, he'd invited along a few other racers, including John Napier, in a new alcohol burning Funny Car, Rob Pilkington and Russell Ladbrook, also in Funny Cars, Rob Youngs, licensing a new altered and former Speedway racer Pino Priolo licensing his new Doorslammer, which will be running in Top Comp this season. While Maurice's day probably could have gone a little better, blowing the doors off his own race car on his second pass of the day, the rest of the day ran very well and all the racers present showed a lot of promise for the upcoming season.

The following weekend, Kevin Hort had hired the track to test his Holden Monaro Super Sedan and also to give son Ethan some time behind the wheel of Kevin's previous drive, the Holden ute he'd previously campaigned in Super Sedan. Unfortunately, mechanical issues kept Kevin off the track on the day, but Ethan certainly made sure he had all the fun his dad was missing out on, running a best time of 10.23 seconds on his last pass of the day. The ute will now be backed down a little, in order to run Super Street legal times, and Ethan is planning on running a full season in Super Street this season. Other drivers present on the day included Paige Gavin, who was making progress towards her A/JD license, Steve Yozzi in his Supercharged Outlaw BMW, George Separovich in John Faraone's wild Charger, George Kontarinis in his turbocharged Camaro and Gail Rowles and Lisa Powell both making licensing passes in cars usually driven by their partners.

Today's track hire was organised by Street Torque, from Maddington, who had hired the track on behalf of some of their customers. Spicing up the mix a little, were a number of regular National Open competitors including Dan Mitchell, Phil Purser, Adam Croker, Marty Dack and Matt Treasure. In an unfortunate twist, shortly after Phil Purser had completed his first pass after a roll over late last season, Dan Mitchell made contact with the right hand track wall, turned left and put the car on it's roof, before contacting the left side track wall and sliding most of the way to the finish line.

After that rather unfortunate start to the day, things could only really pick up, and they certainly did that, with Matt Treasure taking to the track in Allan and Cheryl Greene's Greene Machine Nitro Funny Car. Matt has previous driving experience in blown alcohol Top Comp cars, including an angry altered and a very quick funny car, and took to the Nitro Funny Car experience like he'd been doing it all his career. After proving himself in the burnout and over the shorter distances as required by ANDRA, Matt was given the opportunity to make a full pass at the close of the test session, and he didn't disappoint with a 5.55 second pass setting him on his way to completing his licensing requirements tomorrow. ANDRA requires that Nitro Funny Car drivers complete their licensing on two separate days, in order to prove their abilities with changing weather and track conditions, and the Greene Machine team have taken the opportunity to start their licensing at today's private hire and will attempt to complete their obligations at tomorrows public Test'n'Tune, again at the Perth Motorplex.

Over 120 teams have nominated for the official pre-season test and tune, with several more expected to nominate tomorrow at the track. Entry is only $25 per adult, and the cars and bikes will be on track from 11am to 5pm.

My Facebook Fan Page

2010-10-15T11:23:00.000+08:00

Some of you may already know that I have a fan page on facebook, in fact, quite a few of you probably do, as I have over 500 fans there. It was just a couple of days ago that I hit that 500 fan mark, and in celebration of that milestone, I decided to release a limited edition canvas print.

This is a photo taken while we were travelling the South West corner of the United States during the drag racing off season this year, with this particular shot being at the historic Famoso Raceway in Bakersfield, California.

The prints are available in two sizes, either 18 inches by 8 inches, or 28 inches by 12 inches, and are printed on 390gsm archival canvas, stretched over a hardwood frame. The price for the larger print is $190 and the smaller print is $130, however these prices don't include shipping, due to the size of the print. Once again, due to the shipping costs, the only way to order these is by emailing me so that we can discuss shipping options.

The Bonneville Run Wrap Up

2010-09-23T09:52:00.001+08:00

It's now a little over two weeks since we returned from The Bonneville Run, a road trip taking in several states in the USA, during which time we managed to clock up over 5000 miles in my 1970 Cadillac Fleetwood 75. We drove through California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah, seeing plenty of sights and taking plenty of photos along the way. The purpose of this posting is to provide a brief overview of where we went and what we saw, and to hopefully entice you to check out the rest of the stuff I've posted from the trip.

Our flights with Air New Zealand took us to the city of Auckland, New Zealand, on the way to the United States. On the way over, this let us grab a hire car at the airport and explore some of the city. We headed to the top of Mount Eden, a volcanic hill in the middle of Auckland, where I grabbed a couple of shots of the city at dawn, then drove around for a while and found somewhere to have breakfast. We spent the rest of the morning and some of the afternoon at the Auckland War Memorial and Museum before grabbing lunch and heading back to the airport for our flights to San Francisco.

At San Francisco, we were picked up by my sister-in-law, Nicole, who would be joining us along with my brother, David, for the first couple of weeks of the road trip. We had a barbecue dinner and a few beers while we discussed some of the plans for the first leg of the trip. The next morning, we picked up the Cadillac from a local workshop who'd been giving it some mechanical attention to make sure it got us where we were planning on going and back again. we then hit the Interstate and headed for Los Angeles.

Our first stop in Los Angeles was at the Bob's Big Boy diner in Downey, where we met up with some members of the Cranksters Rod and Kustom Club, also from Australia, who were travelling the United States at the same time as us, and with similar intentions. We knew we were going to be in some of the same towns along the way, so we had made plans to stay in touch and catch up when we could. We were in Los Angeles for a few days, so we had time to visit the Petersen and Wally Parks museums and a couple of famous hot rod shops, including Moon Eyes in Santa Fe Springs and Hollywood Hot Rods in Burbank. On the way out of Los Angeles, we also stopped at the John Force Race Station and spent the night at the Wigwam Motel in San Bernardino. This motel is part of a former chain of motels upon which the traffic cone motels in the Pixar movie Cars were based.

From Los Angeles, we trekked out to Barstow, a route that roughly follows part of Route 66, before diverting from that classic route, as well as the modern route to Las Vegas, to visit Death Valley. Death Valley gets it's name from the extreme heat at the valley floor, with some of the most extreme high temperatures on Earth being experienced here, which combine with the steep hills on either side to make even driving through Death Valley a challenge. Many auto manufacturers use Death Valley as a testing area for this reason, and we picked a hotel in Beatty for lunch one day due to it's popularity with the test teams and the automotive memorabilia plastered on it's walls as a result.

From Death Valley it was on down to Las Vegas, where we would again meet up with the Cranksters for a meal at the Hooters Casino and a visit to the Fremont Street Experience, part of the old Las Vegas that has been turned into a pedestrial mall and fitted with the largest TV screen on the planet. We spent the rest of our nights in Vegas wandering up and down the main strip taking photos of the neon signs on the strip while sampling the many bars on the strip. Las Vegas police tolerate public drinking, even though it's not strictly allowed, as long as people aren't causing trouble. While in Las Vegas, we stayed at the Bellagio Casino and took the opportunity to sample their buffet, which is widely considered one of the best in the world, and the line up to get in was testament to that. Thankfully, David and Nicole had secured us a 'front of the line' pass, which got us onto the back of a line of about 5 people, instead of one that was probably over 50 metres long.

After Las Vegas, we spent the night at the Grand Canyon, staying at the North Rim Lodge. Due to getting side tracked by an Eiffel Tower shaped margarita glass and the M&M World store in Las Vegas, we didn't end up getting to the Canyon until well after dark, however I was up the next morning just after sunrise to wander down to the Canyon and see the sights. This was also the spot where, a couple of hours later, I proposed to Kate, and thankfully she said yes.

From the Grand Canyon, we headed north to an overnight stop at the small town of Beaver, in Utah, then on to West Wendover in Nevada. West Wendover and Wendover actually straddle the Nevada-Utah border, with two of the casino's in West Wendover having the wall of their gaming rooms right on the border and a carpark in Utah, which is a much less casino-friendly state than Nevada. The reason we were in Wendover was for the Southern California Timing Association's annual Bonneville SpeedWeek, one of the biggest gatherings of speed freaks you'll ever see. Over 500 cars entered to race at Bonneville this week and the pit area was around 3 miles long.

In addition to the 500 entrants and their crews, an enormous number of people turn up every year to watch the racing and to check out the many cool cars in the pits. At night, the racers and spectators descend on the town of Wendover, or gather at "The Bend in the Road", an area on the access road where many SpeedWeek attendees choose to camp, instead of staying in one of the overpriced rooms available in town. As Wendover only see the huge numbers of visitors that Salt Racing brings to the town a couple of times a year, the local casino's aren't able to justify expanding to comfortably house all the people who want to stay in Wendover for the week, and consequently the price of a room jumps substantially for that period of time. Our room at the Red Garter would have been less than $50 any other time of the year and looked and smelt every bit a $20 dive. However, being SpeedWeek, the price ended up being US$230 per night, probably about 10 times what I'd normally pay for a very basic room that stank badly of stale cigarette smoke, despite being a non-smoking room. With that said, the accomodation was the only downer on an absolutely awesome couple of days out at the salt, and even though at this point in time I don't know when I'll be back, I can't wait for the next time we drive off the end of that access road onto the salt.

After 4 days at Bonneville, we had to move on in order to get to some of our other planned events on the trip. We still had a race meeting at Bakersfield at the weekend and a car show in Pleasanton the following weekend. We spent the night in a town called Winnemucca, at the Town House motel, probably the lucky find of the trip as far as accommodation goes. The Town House is just a small motel with a handful of rooms and had mixed reviews online. However, this very well priced motel turned out to be one of the nicest places we stayed in, especially for the dollars paid. We headed out of Winnemucca, making our way back towards California, and our next overnight stop at the south end of picturesque Lake Tahoe. During winter Tahoe is a ski resort, and the high altitude means that even in summer it's a rather pleasant place to visit with some awesome scenery and roads.

As much as I loved driving some of the roads up until this point, including Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles and the roads out to the Grand Canyon, they were nothing compared to what we were about to experience. The road from South Lake Tahoe to Yosemite National Park, via State Route 4, includes a section of road known as Ebbett's Pass, which has some of the best scenery combined with some nice winding roads, tight hairpins on narrow roads and some fairly steep climbing, with the road peaking at almost 9000 feet above sea level. We paused at around 8400 feet above sea level to take a few photos of one of the pristine lakes along the pass. Lunch here was at Giant Burger in the town of Arnold, where the burgers may not have been as big as some we've eaten, but the taste certainly made up for any inaccuracies in the name.

After we got back on the road, we continued down to the historic Wawona hotel, in the heart of Yosemite National Park, where we had rooms booked for the night. We made a stop off at the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoia in the morning and then pointed the big Cadillac towards Bakersfield and hit the highway.

We arrived in Bakersfield in the early evening and spent the weekend at the local dragstrip for the American Nostalgia Racing Association's Summer Nationals. This was about where we had stopped planning accomodation for the trip, as the next event we'd planned to attend was the GoodGuys 24th annual West Coast Nationals, in Pleasanton, near San Francisco. We decided over the course of the weekend to head back to Los Angeles for one more night and then take the Pacific Coastal Highway back to San Jose, with an overnight stop at San Simeon.

This extension to the road trip meant we could go to Santa Monica Pier and Venice Beach in Los Angeles, which we had run out of time to do the first time around, and we got to check out some of the most amazing coastal roads around. Leaving San Simeon on the Wednesday morning, we checked out the local Elephant Seal population, lazing on the beach, and then spent the whole day driving through some of the most intense fog you'll ever see. The fog would mostly roll up the side of the hills from the coast, pop up over the road and then continue rolling further up the hills that line the highway, an amazing sight to see and something that I had to try to capture with the camera. After dinner at MargaritaVille near Santa Cruz, we left the Pacific Coastal Highway and headed back to San Jose, where we would be based for the rest of our time in the United States.

The remaining 10 days or so was spent exploring Northern California's Bay Area, heading out to Pleasanton for the West Coast Nationals and to Sacramento to visit the California State Capitol Building, as well as SoCal Custom's and Sacramento Vintage Ford. The Pleasanton West Coast Nationals are run by the GoodGuys Rod and Custom Association, and this was the 24th running of the event. Over 3000 hot rods and customs took over the Alameda County Fairgrounds to put on one of the most impressive shows I've been to. I reckon you could spend a week here checking out the cars and still not see everything, however we only had two days.

During this trip we visited a couple of sites of American military historical significance, the first of these being the now retired aircraft carrier USS Hornet, now on permanent display at Alameda Point and open to the public as a floating museum, carrying a variety of aircraft from throughout her lifetime.

We also visited a former missile launching site in the Marin Headlands, Nike site SF-88L, which has been restored to provide an example of a site in operational condition, complete with fully functioning missile lift and launch area, although the missiles themselves are no longer operational. The site is under the care of the National Parks Service, as a part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and is open to the public from Wednesday through Friday.

While in Los Angeles, we had taken the opportunity to experience Major League Baseball with a Dodgers home game and now that we were in San Francisco, we had booked tickets to see the San Francisco 49ers play at Candlestick Park. I had grown up following the 49ers through the years of Joe Montana, Jerry Rice and Steve Young and was looking forward to seeing my favourite NFL team playing live at their home ground. A great night out was topped off by a 49er's win and a visit to In'n'Out for burgers on the way home.

Our last night in San Jose saw us head to the local drive in with David and Nicole, followed by a day of hectic packing and last minute shopping before a dash to San Francisco International airport, where we made the line for check in with only minutes to spare. Once again with a long stopover in Auckland, this time we stayed inside the terminal, making the most of the available shower facilities and having a refreshing breakfast before finding a cosy set of seats to stretch out on for a rest before the flight back to Perth, arriving home just after 7pm on September the 6th, which also happens to be my birthday.

We're now getting used to being back at work and wondering when we will next be able to head off on another trip like this one. This trip was totally self funded, and a heap of fun, however it was also a huge strain on the hip pocket, and only possible due to a heap of help from David and Nicole, who put up with having a 21 foot long Cadillac parked in their driveway from April 2009 until now, which we've used for a grand total of eight and a half weeks since then. By the time we go again, Kate and I will have had our first child, and the Cadillac will be probably back in Australia.

I'm currently looking into shipping options for the Cadillac, and am very close to starting the process of importing it to Australia, meaning that if we're going to attempt another trip like this next year, we'll have to not only do it before we set those plans in motion, we'll also need to find a new home for the Cadillac and a workshop who are willing to work on it as well. However, it's pretty safe to say that unless we picked up a fairly decent amount of sponsorship for a future trip, we'll be bringing the Cadillac to Australia and will leave the repeat performance for several years.

If you've made it this far, you may also be interested in reading the rest of the blog posts, which I attempted to post every day, although some ended up being delayed due to not having internet access or other factors, however I did make up for lost time when I had the opportunity. The other blog posts can be found at tbr.landbarge.com. There is also a gallery of photos that I updated throughout the roadtrip, which contains over 3000 photos. You can find that over in the galleries at LandBarge.com

Lack of Posts

2010-08-23T17:12:00.002+08:00

You may have noticed a lack of posts on this blog recently, that's because I've been off travelling the United States for the last couple of weeks, and will be here until the 6th of September. In the meantime, you can keep up to date with what I'm doing over on The Bonneville Run blog.

Super Model Car Sunday

2010-07-14T13:55:00.000+08:00

The annual Super Model Car Sunday show was held at the West Coast Street Rod Club's Malaga clubrooms on Sunday July 11th. This years Super Model Car Sunday was the 12th running of the event, with over 800 models entered for the day, as well as trade stands and other entertainment on offer.

The first thing most people will notice when they arrive at Super Model Car Sunday is that there is always a good collection of Hot Rods and Kustoms outside the show, and many will spend hours walking around the streets checking out the full size show before they head inside to see the miniatures on display.

The cars on display inside ranged from crazy custom built cars that could only exist in model form to hot rods, street machines and kustoms and a wide range of exotics as well as a selection of race cars. Also on display were several model trucks, both static and remote controlled. Some local remote control enthusiasts also braved the cold weather to put on displays with their RC trucks and drift cars. Two of my favourite cars on display were the nostalgia style funny cars shown on this page.

If you want to see more photos from Super Model Car Sunday, head on over to the gallery on HighOctanePhotos.com, where there are over 200 more photos waiting for you.

American Independence Day, In Perth

2010-07-08T18:34:00.001+08:00

Last Sunday was American Independence Day (July the 4th, for anyone that didn't already know) and Kate and I went to a local celebration put on by the American Womens Club of Perth. This is an event thats been going on for several years now and gets bigger every year, however it's the first time I've made it down to one. We had a good time, and will most likely go again next year.

The day was held at the Morris Buzzacott Reserve, in Kardinya, and the AWC had organised a small display of American cars and stalls selling hot dogs, American beers and soft drinks. There was also an arcade style basketball stall and a petting zoo. Inside the community centre hall were some stalls selling American snack foods and the extremely popular Krispy Kreme stall. The hall was also the venue for the Pledge of Allegiance and the singing of the National Anthems (both American and Australian).

Back outside again, and a gridiron had been marked out, where my old team, the Claremont Jets, played a scratch match as part of the 'American Sports Demonstration' on the day. A decent crowd lined the sides of the field of play to watch some good old American football.

Kim's Pizza Night and Cruise

2010-06-26T15:22:00.001+08:00

A short while ago, on a Friday night, Kim (aka Lo-Mad) ran one of his 'when we feel like it' Pizza nights. The night consists of us gathering for pizza at Brando's Pizza in Victoria Park, standing around outside talking cars for a bit and then heading off on a cruise before stopping for coffee somewhere at the end of the night.

A small group made it to the gathering for pizzas at Brando's in Victoria Park, however Tuff Tin, Hey Jude and Extreme Eric were unable to join us for the cruise, which would eventually take us to Scarborough.

This time round, we cruised down to Hungry Jacks (To the rest of the world, it's Burger King, but that name was already taken when they opened here, so they called them Hungry Jacks instead) in Claremont (not far from where I grew up).

After we left Claremont, we headed down to Fremantle to cruise up and down the local strip (and to pick up Kim's other half) and then headed up the coast to Peter's By The Sea in Scarborough, where we finished the night off.

You can see more photos from the night here.

Cranksters Winter Madness 2 - Blacky's 57 Chev

2010-06-19T00:08:00.001+08:00

Over the Foundation Day long weekend, the Cranksters Hot Rod Club and members of the Goodfella's Hot Rod Club as well as a number of other interested and talented individuals gathered at Ferret Boilermaking in Maddington for the second Cranksters Winter Madness weekend.

The idea of these weekends is to attempt to build a hot rod or custom over the course of a weekend. Last year it was Ben "Flathead" Forster's Los Drogas Model T coupe, this year it was Geoff "Blacky" Black's turn with his 1957 2 door Chevrolet Bel Air, the Moonshine Express.

Prior to the weekend, Mick "Redbeard" Rumbold of Mick's Mods in Kalgoorlie (that's Mick on the left in the photo, if you haven't guessed from his nickname) had built a 505 cubic inch big block Chev for the project, using a Dart block. Other prep work before the weekend included many hours of rust repair to the body by Blacky and Damo, who had been chosen to paint the car, and tack welding the HQ front end into the Chev chassis. Over the course of the weekend, the interior would be stripped out of the car, the body rubbed back, primered and painted. The doors were painted first, as they were to receive special treatment by signwriter Scully, who designed and painted the Moonshine Express signwriting. The body was removed from the chassis to enable the crew to split the jobs up over as many teams as possible, with separate teams taking car of the interior trim, wiring the body, preparing the chassis to be reunited with the body and polishing the multitude of chrome parts that make a 57 Bel Air complete.

Meanwhile, Drew and Russ were busy preparing a new hood lining, fabricating and trimming new door trims and retrimming the Range Rover seats that Blacky had chosen to be his new front seats. Glenn "Watto" Watson was hard at work cutting and shaping the sound and heat absorbent matting that now covers the floor of the Bel Air and anyone who looked like they didn't have anything to do was busy polishing all the miscellaneous bits of chrome trim that would have to be fitted to the car when it was time to put it all back together.

Late Saturday afternoon, the chassis team were happy with their progress and loaded the chassis onto the trailer so that Blacky could take it to the sand blasters. On it's return, it was set up for painting, as were the body and doors.

With all the major parts laid out waiting for paint, it was time for Damo and Scully to work their magic. Damo had already painted the doors in a makeshift paint booth outside, and before the rest of the paintwork commenced, Scully painted the Moonshine Express designs on the doors. Once the doors were painted, they were moved to another room and the workshop was cleared so that Damo could paint the chassis and body. The chassis was painted a standard underbody black, which the body received a coat of violet crumble purple paint with a satin finish. Both chassis and body were painted 'wet on wet', meaning the chassis was primered, then the body, then the chassis was painted black and the body in colour, with about 15 minutes between primer and colour.

Sunday would see teams fitting brakes, brake lines and fuel lines to the chassis, fitting the Turbo 400 to the back of the big block and continuing the fit out of the body, with the steering column getting fitted and a lot more wiring being run under the dash. The dash cluster was also painted and fitted with instrumentation, which Blacky would fit later on Sunday night.

Also on Sunday night, the team would attempt to fit the big Chev power plant. Unfortunately, the 'bolt on' headers would present a slight problem, as 2 of the pipes on each side of the motor fouled on the new front end. With time and resources at a premium, it was decided that this was one of those jobs that would have to be rectified after the weekend was over, and the pipes were cut back far enough to clear the chassis.

After the headers were modified and the engine mounts and front crossmember modified to suit the motor, the remainder of the exhaust was pieced together and tied in place, the workshop was re-arranged to prepare for the mounting of the body on the chassis and tools were put down for the night.

When Monday morning rolled around, it was time to get serious about putting the body on the chassis, at which point the wiring harness could be connected to the engine and the fuel and brake lines could be finished, but before that could happen, the exaust was finished and mounted and the tailshaft loop, which doubles as an exhaust hanger, was fitted.

The glaziers were on hand shortly afterwards to fit the front and rear glass before the team gathered again to lift the body onto the chassis.

Once the body was on the chassis, it was time to finish a couple of wiring and plumbing tasks and to fit up the doors, front sheet metal and radiator. Norm and Vicki from Aussie Desert Coolers were not only on hand to film the event for an upcoming DVD, they also supplied the radiator used in the build.

Now that everything was back together, it was time to fire up the car and drive it out of the workshop. After a few false starts, the big Chev fired and left two black stripes on the workshop floor as it left the building, coming to a stop surrounded by onlookers out the front of Ferret Boilermaking.

There are a lot more photos over on LandBarge.com, 396 of them in the Winter Madness 2 gallery.

It's the Little Things

2010-05-21T12:58:00.000+08:00

I like it when I find an answer to a question I wasn't really asking, and it's happened to me twice in the last couple of weeks. It's usually something that I'll wonder about when I have no way of finding out the answer, and then forget about by the time I'm sitting in front of a computer with the whole internet in front of me, just begging to give me some answers.

The first time, was when I was browsing an American hot rod forum, the HAMB, and came upon a thread discussing desmodromic valve actuation and it's applications. I had been wondering for some time, just why it was that Ducati motorcycles had such a characteristic rattle at idle, and it turns out that they use a desmodromic valve system. That is, instead of a spring to push the valve closed, they use a second rocker arm that pushes it closed in much the same way that it is pushed open, just that it pushes up instead of down. In earlier days, these systems were much more prevalent than today, as early valve spring materials did not support engines running at the high rpm's that we now expect from performance motors. Desmodromic systems of the time had their own pitfalls, but offered enough benefits for them to be fairly widely used in the performance and motorsport arena. Today, the only major manufacturer still using a desmodromic type valve actuation system is Ducati, who seem to have ironed out most, if not all, of the bugs in the system.

The second time I had that feeling of "oooohhhhh.... so THAT's what that's all about" was yesterday, as I was sitting at my dentists waiting for an appointment. I don't normally read the magazines in waiting rooms, as there's usually not much that grabs my attention, however yesterday I decided to have a rifle through the pile and see what was on offer. After pushing the gossip rags to one side, and hunting around some more, I found an issue of Sophisticated Traveller, the Australian Financial Review's travel insert, that contained an article on California's Mission Trail. Hidden in that article, was the answer to my question "What is so special about El Camino Real?" We had noticed last time we were in the USA, that one of the street names that keeps popping up in a number of different towns was El Camino Real, and we weren't sure why, however, at the time, while intriguing, it wasn't intriguing enough for us to actually type the words into Google and go looking for an answer, but now I've got one, and I intend to share it with anyone who's gotten this far.

As you may already know, long before California was part of the United States of America, the Spanish pushed north from Mexico and established a series of 21 missions each approximately 1 days ride apart, at the same time, the Russians headed south from Alaska, as far as San Francisco, but that's another story. The Spanish missions spread from San Bruno in the state of Baja California Sur in Mexico, up to Mission San Francisco in Sonoma, California. The track that joined these missions together was known as El Camino Real, which translates to either The Royal Road, The Royal Highway or The Kings Highway, depending on who translates it. From 1683 until 1912, El Camino Real was an unpaved road, initially marked by yellow flowers from mustard seeds sprinkled along it's length by the padres who traveled it, but in 1912, the state of California decided to start paving this historic roadway. Over the years that followed, El Camino Real has become one of Calfornia's busiest non-Interstates.

Perth at Night - The Haunted House

2010-05-17T14:08:00.013+08:00

On Friday night, a group of us went out to take some night photos at an abandoned house north of Perth.

There are a couple of stories about this place that suggest it may be haunted, but we didn't see any evidence of that this night. It is however, fairly well run down and there's a fairly constant stream of visitors, some just wanting to look around, some wanting to skate in the empty swimming pool and some come to paint on the walls. Of course, there are some who come to drink, take drugs or trash the place, but we didn't encounter any of those while we were there.

There is literally no ambient light here at night, except for the moonlight. that means that all of these shots were taken with longer exposures, with the camera mounted on a tripod. They also all used off camera flash for additional lighting, varying from a couple of low powered pops for the close up work to running around firing flashes from a number of different angles trying to illuminate every nook and cranny (and even then, still missing some).

We're already planning more visits to this location, as the constantly evolving nature of the artwork is going to ensure that there will be new, interesting things to photograph for a long time to come.

You can check out the full set of photos from the night shoot at the Haunted House in the galleries over at LandBarge.com.

Tumbler.

2010-05-06T09:48:00.010+08:00

Without a doubt, when it comes to movie cars, some of the coolest cars come from the Batman franchise. The latest in this line up is the Tumbler, from the Christopher Nolan directed films Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.

Only four full size vehicles were built for the movie, but at least one collector from Japan was determined to get his hands on a Tumbler. In order to do so, he enlisted the help of a couple of guys from Perth, Western Australia, best known to many for their replicas of the Interceptor from the Mad Max films and if you head over to their website, you can check them out for yourselves.

Building this replica has been a four year project for Grant Hodgson and Gordon Hayes of Mad Max Unlimited, and now that it's almost over, they have no plans to make another Tumbler. While they've certainly proven it's possible, the complex panel work involved has been a lot more time consuming than expected, although not without it's rewards. The Tumbler replica has already been featured in one national magazine, and will soon be featured in one of the biggest modified car magazines in Australia. It's too late to catch a glimpse of this car on Australian soil, as it's leaving for Japan very soon, but it will be on display in a privately owned museum over there, along with some of Grant and Gordon's other work. If you speak Japanese, or just want to look at the pictures, here's the website of the museum that commissioned this replica.

Spotto a 57 Chev, A Blown 57 2 Door

2010-04-26T20:50:00.016+08:00

This black 57 Chevrolet sedan was recently spotted at the Perth Motorplex. It was first noticed at a Whoop Ass Wednesday, but unfortunately did not pass scrutiny for the night, partly due to the large blower poking out of the bonnet, a definite no-no on a Wednesday night, due to noise restrictions.

After some work to make the car compliant, it was spotted again amongst almost 200 entrants at the Motorplex's Ford vs Holden event on ANZAC Day, where the supercharger doesn't present a problem. Some things that caught my attention on this 57 included the SuperChiller water to air intercooler sitting under the blower, the MSD EFI system controlling fuel and spark and some of the biggest rear tyres I've seen on a street car in a long time. The interior is a perfect blend of classic styling with some modern touches, including a full set of AutoMeter gauges and a B&M shifter.

The car was recently imported from Maryland in the United States, where it had been street registered and driven. It's also sporting a roll cage and has apparently run sub 10 second times in the past. On it's first and only pass at the Ford vs Holden event, the car ran 10.97s @ 128mph, with a launch that suggests there's still more to come from this black beauty, following the pass, the black 57's owner indicated his intentions to do the required work to bring the car up to ANDRA spec so that he can race again next season.

Tanner Foust Drifts Mulholland Drive

2010-03-19T13:37:00.003+08:00

Tanner Foust Street Drift: Mulholland

Streetfire.net recently posted this video of Tanner Foust drifting his (Toyota) Scion tC over a 2 mile closed section of Los Angeles' famous Mulholland Drive.

Tanner is an accomplished stunt driver and two time Formula D champion, and recently had the opportunity to close one of America's most famous stretches of road for a private drift session. The car in this video is far removed from a normal road going Scion tC, having been converted to rear wheel drive and fitted with a TRD prepared V8 originally built to run in Busch series NASCAR races.

Busy Weekend For Car Lovers in WA

2010-03-14T22:26:00.003+08:00

Well, it was a pretty busy weekend for me anyway, although it kicked into gear a little later on Saturday than normal with the running of the second Night Masters round for the WASCC's championship season.

I started the day off with one of the longest walks in Western Australian motorsport, down to Kolb Corner. This entails walking around 1.5km on the narrow wall that lines the circuit, interrupted by speaker poles and fences that have started to fall over. The walk to Track 6 at the Perth Motorplex is a breeze by comparison, plus you can often get a lift to Track 6 with a passing race team.

The Night Masters presents a number of challenges and opportunities for photographers, and one of those is catching the glowing brake rotors at the main braking points. This shot was taken at the entry to V8Race.com corner (formerly known as a number of things, but I still know it as Shell Corner).

Looking from V8Race.com corner down through the Esses and showing Westrac Cat Corner, this is a 30 second exposure showing the light trails from the HQ Holdens as they round Cat Corner and climb the hill to V8Race.com corner.

Sunday was definitely a day for those with an interest in classic iron, with two events catering to the hot rod and custom fraternity. The Cranksters Rod and Custom Club's annual Pipeline Picnic was held at Mundaring, with hundreds of hot rods, customs and street machines filling the grounds of the Mundaring Hotel and the neighbouring Mundaring Community Sculpture Park.

Ben Forster's 'Las Drogas', shown below, was built by members of the Cranksters, Goodfellas and a number of other Perth clubs, while the paint on the doors was laid down by signwriter and auto artist Scully, owner of the white three window coupe shown above.

After leaving Mundaring, I headed down to the Perth Motorplex for their Retro Drags event, these are a great relaxed event where owners of nostalgia type cars can race against similar cars or park up in the pits and check out some racing.

Ron Crosby has been a long time supporter of nostalgia racing in Western Australia and was racing today in his Holden 6 powered Front Engined Dragster.

Unfortunately, I know nothing more about this 68 Charger than that it was sitting in the pits and I just knew I had to get a photo of it as I was walking.

This was the final Retro Drags event for the 2009/2010 season at the Perth Motorplex, so if you want to run at the next Retro Drags event, keep an eye on the Motorplex's website for their 2010/2011 season calendar when it's released. In the meantime, Nostalgia type vehicles have their own bracket at every Fast Friday event.

Over the next couple of days I'll be sorting through the rest of the photos from these three events to upload to High Octane Photos.

Sculpture By The Sea - Cottesloe Beach

2010-03-07T18:04:00.004+08:00

'Sculpture By The Sea' is a public art exhibition that visits Perth's Cottesloe Beach every summer. There are also 'Sculpture By The Sea' exhibits in Bondi in New South Wales, and Aarhus in Denmark.

This piece was constructed entirely out of plastic bottle caps contained in an onion-bag type of mesh.

Over 60 sculptures have been installed on the beach and on the grassy banks overlooking the ocean at Cottesloe Beach, from artists not only from Australia, but from around the world.

Last night, myself, my girlfriend Kate and a number of other Perth photographers and car nuts descended on Cottesloe Beach to check out this years exhibit. As we also all enjoy the challenge of night photography, we hit the beach around sunset and kept shooting until just after 10pm, before heading down to Capt'n Munchies in Fremantle for a bite to eat.

Sculpture By The Sea continues at Cottesloe Beach until the 23rd of March, and is well worth a visit.

One More Sleep Until the Westernationals!

2010-02-26T21:13:00.003+08:00

The 2010 Westernationals will get under way at the Perth Motorplex at 11am tomorrow, and I'm thinking back over the Westernationals of the past. For some reason, I have it stuck in my head that the first major drag racing meeting I shot was the 2003 Westernationals, however, I cannot find any of the photos from that meeting, or any drag racing photos from 2004. I can, however, find photos from the 2005 Westernationals, and the other day I went through those photos and picked out a number of shots that caught my attention in some way.

South Australian Gary Busch drives a Funny Car in SuperCharged Outlaws, but 5 years ago he was behind the wheel of this Altered, also a SuperCharged Outlaw.

Tony Argentino is another SuperCharged Outlaw driver who has changed cars since 2005. Tony and wife Gillian purchased "The Hitman" from the USA a few years ago, retiring their 34 Ford coupe to do so.

Yet another driver making a few changes over the seasons has been Mark Sheehan. As a relatively new photogapher back in 2005, this dragster, running in Competition, didn't grab my attention any where near as much as it did looking back over the photos the other day and spotting a few markings that suggested it belonged to Mark. The first time that I can remember hearing about Mark Sheehan was as a methanol powered Altered driver. Mark has since moved on again from methanol fuel to nitromethane, having run a couple of half track passes in a nitromethane fuelled Altered before switching to a funny car body and joining an elite group of Australian Nitro Funny Car drivers.

This photo is one that has me wondering what happened to my older photos. While it's always possible that I'm just confused and this was my first Westernationals, I definately remember seeing Steve McGrath racing the Toppolino Altered that he sold to Mark Mackay in order to build this car.

The Westernationals is a round of the Australian Top Doorslammer championship, and here, Ben Bray is driving the 57 Chevrolet that used to belong to his father, Victor Bray, and is currently being driven by the Northern Territory's Matt Abel.

Looking forwards to this years event, the official Motorplex pre-Westernationals Test'n'Tune is always a great event that most people probably don't even know is on. Due to the nature of Test'n'Tunes, it's probably best that people who aren't drag racing tragics don't usually know these are on, as there is no set program and it's not uncommon to have long periods where nothing is happening on the track. For the die hards however, the Test'n'Tunes are an opportunity to get a sneak peak at a new car or bike, or perhaps a chance to see a team in action that may not have raced at the Motorplex for a while and want to re-acquaint themselves with the track. It's also a chance for even the regular teams to try something a little different with their setup, which can often make for some interesting viewing.

I wasn't able to make it to this years Westernationals Test'n'Tune, however Kate Bovell borrowed my camera gear and took a few photos so that I didn't miss out on all the fun.

Here, Carmello Belladonna guides his father Vince into the staging beams as they attempt to license Vince's shiny new AA/AP Torana. Vince's long term plans for this car include running in Australia's Top Doorslammer category.

Murray O'Connor's stunning Falcon Top Doorslammer has been repaired after a recent incident and is looking as impressive as ever.

Over 350 teams have entered for this years Westernationals, including around 60 interstate teams, making it the biggest drag racing event ever held in WA, and the biggest 2 day event in Australia.

Night Masters 1 at Barbagallo Raceway

2010-02-24T09:52:00.004+08:00

One of my favourite meetings of the WASCC's Club Racing Season, is the Night Masters. In the past the club have run these events as a 3 event series, as a stand alone event and as a 2 event series. This years format saw the first round of the Night Masters held on the 20th of February. The second round is scheduled for the 13th of March.

Ash Barnett curb hopping on the way up through the Esses at Wanneroo.

Rex Meechin's UltraSport is a very impressive car, incredibly quick around Wanneroo and a work of art as well.

Rob Hagarty had a little off track excursion on the first lap of this race, and was working hard to make up ground, as you can see here.

In the Historic Touring Cars, Martyn Piercey got out of shape in his Alfetta GTV and nudged the Alfa of Chris Chang, sending Chang into the sand and leaving a fairly large dent in his drivers door.

Of course, the reason this meeting is called the Night Masters, is because a large portion of the racing is under lights. Here, Street Car competitor Ivan Tan is approaching Ford Fastbreak corner in his Subaru WRX.

Improved Production racing is growing quickly in WA, with the class now being big enough to be granted their own races at the Night Masters rounds, instead of sharing with the similar Street Car class as has happened in the past.

Traditionally, the highlight of the Night Masters program has been the Night Masters races themselves, which featured the quickest cars out of a number of categories on the night, and consisted of 3, 3 lap mini-races with a reverse grid start for each of the mini-races. Unfortunately, in the last couple of years these races haven't been run, but I for one, am still hopeful that we will see them return in future.

The next round of the Night Masters series is set for the 13th of March, part of a busy weekend for me, with the annual ACE Ford Club Cruise also on the 13th and the Cranksters Rod and Kustom Club's annual Pipeline Cruise on Sunday the 14th, along with the Perth Motorplex's Retro Drags event.