It's the Little Things

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

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.

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

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

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

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

'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!

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

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.

Experimenting With In Car Cameras

For some time now, I've been keen to experiment with some in car video camera work, and not long ago I finally bit the bullet and ordered in a mount from Camzilla. The mount turned up a couple of days before the weekends round of the Australian Top Alcohol and Pro Stock Bike championships at the Perth Motorplex. After testing it out in my 18 second ambulance on the way home from work one day, I decided to try fitting it to a couple of cars over the course of the weekend. The first car I put the mount and camera setup into was Belinda Hay's "Mrs Canada" 383 powered VN Commodore Super Streeter. This car runs regularly in the low 11 second zone and this particular pass was completed in 11.3 seconds.



After a quick look at the footage on the back of the camera, I decided to check out the Super Sedan lineup for something a little quicker. It didn't take long before I spotted Norbert Claite's low 9 second capable "Wild Ute", a 454 cube Big Block Chev powered Ford Falcon ute. Whereas I had mounted the camera to the passenger window glass in Belinda's Commodore, in Norbert's car I decided to fix the mount to the floor. The video from Norberts car gets a little shaky at times, which I put down to vibration in the floor rather than the mount itself, which is not only part of the testing process, but also a better result than some other video I've seen shot.



The camera is a Canon (of course) Legria FS200, it's about a middle of the range consumer camera, there's a lot of cheaper stuff out there and a lot more expensove stuff. This particular one is a model without an internal hard drive (as those often fail prematurely when used in cars a lot, due to the constant vibration), it does have image stabilisation, but I suspect the IS would be even better on a more expensive camera.

The mount is a Camzilla mount, these are assembled from components from a company called Ram mounts, and they look and feel like very solid gear. This mount uses 3 large suction cups to attach it to a flat (or almost flat) surface - it can handle slight curves, like a car window. The company claim you can use these mounts on the outside of cars as well as the inside, but aside from the wind noise problems that creates, I'm still not game doing that just yet.

Thanks to both of the teams for putting up with me trying out different locations in their cars to get these shots.

Australia Day 2010

This year for Australia Day, k8 and I decided to do something a little different, for us anyway. As long as we've been together we've been spending the day at other people's houses. This year, we spent the day at home, and cooked up a bit of a feast. We actually cooked enough for several more people to eat, but that's ok, it's all good food, and we'll be eating leftovers for a while now.

I cooked the meat, and k8 cooked some garlic potatoes, cauliflower and broccoli cheese and some roasted vegetables including potato, pumpkin and carrots. The meat side of things consisted of a pork roast and a lamb roast, both smoked in a Weber BBQ.

Cooking the meat took about 4 hours, from lighting the coals in the Weber to getting the meat onto the plate, and involved smoking the meat with hickory wood. I have previously used hickory to smoke a turkey and pork combination for Christmas, so I had some idea of how things were going to pan out today. For instance, I knew to keep an eye on things until the meat turned to the desired shade and then to wrap the roasts in aluminium foil to stop the skin from burning while I waited for the rest of the meat to cook.

Of course, a good beer always goes well with a good meal, and today's choice was Beez Neez, a honey flavoured beer brewed by The Matilda Bay Brewery.

Motorvation 24

Motorvation 24 has now been run and won, and since last weekend I've been flat out sorting photos, burning DVD's and uploading to the website. I'm now taking a few minutes to try to put together a few words on the weekend.



This was the first year for a long time that I haven't entered a car, but my club, All Fours and Rotaries Car Club, still entered 6 cars, and took out a whole stack of driving trophies. In past years we've been very successful in the Club Grand Championship, however this year the powers that be decided not to award a trophy to the Champion Club, so we'll never know just how well we performed.



In terms of crowd numbers, from my perspective track side, it certainly appeared that the gate would have suffered as a result of the hotter weather. Both days were well over 40 degrees C, making life difficult for entrants, spectators and staff alike.



If you want to check out who won what, , put together by the Motorplex staff, that will tell you almost everything you could ask about the weekends results.



I'm still working on the galleries for HighOctanePhotos.com, but they shouldn't be too far away now.

ANDRA Pro Series Top Fuel - Round 3

This weekend saw the running of round 3 of the ANDRA Pro Series Australian Top Fuel Championship. Seven cars fronted for this round, with most of the teams electing to leave their transporters parked at the Motorplex after round 2 in December.



Friday nights qualifying session saw good strong passes from all concerned, with Phil Lamattina setting quickest time with a 4.708 second pass, while Bob Shepherd rounded out the field with a 6.290 second first pass, exploding the motor just after half track, leaving a big mess for the track crew and a hole in the track.



All 7 cars were able to make it to the first round of eliminations on Saturday, and the huge crowd at the Motorplex were treated to some of the best Top Fuel racing the venue has ever seen. The first rounds racing saw Darren Morgan defeat Mark Mariani with a 4.834 second pass to a 4.858 second pass. Phil Read ran 4.870 to defeat Allan Dobson with a 5.002. Martin Stamatis made his way to the next round with a 4.809 over Bob Shepherd's 5.481. While Phil Lamattina's top qualifier spot had earned him a solo through to the next round, he certainly didn't take things easy, with a 4.694 second pass, the second quickest lap of the meeting.



The semi-finals saw Read defeat Stamatis 4.708 to 4.967, while Lamattina's 4.709 accounted for Morgan's 5.011. In the final, Read left the line ever so slightly earlier, with a 0.095 reaction time, against Lamattina's 0.120, however by the 1000 foot marker, Lamattina had edged ahead, finishing with a 4.682 to Read's 4.852.

Perth at Night - Barrack Street

Tonight, k8 and I went out for a late night photo mission with John from biante12.com and Dave and Nat from pixelculture.com



Our original intentions were to head up to Hillary's Boat Harbour, in the Northern Suburbs of Perth, however, somewhere along the way we decided to drop in to Barrack Street to see what lighting was turned on for the Bell Tower and the Perth Wheel tonight.



As it turned out, the Perth Wheel was in full operation, and the Bell Tower had most of it's lighting turned on for the night. Consequently, we spent a good couple of hours here taking photos from a bunch of different angles and playing around with long exposures, trying to make the best of a rather strange lighting situation. The intense lighting on the main structures makes it hard to pick up much detail at all in the surrounding parts of the shot, but it can be done.



I also decided to try a little freehand long exposure work, in part because I lent my tripod and remote trigger to k8 so that she could get some practise with those. I was quite happy with the way some of these shots turned out, mind you, I guess I did only work with the safer options here, using fence posts as supports, and shooting targets that had some incident light falling on them, but then, isn't that what it's all about?



After a few hours running round taking various photos, we decided to head off to Exomod Coffee in Mt Lawley, before heading home to check out our photos. Exomod is one of the few places in Perth where you can still get service after about 8pm, as they are open till 12 most days, and run 24 hours on Friday and Saturday.