Grandad's photos

Historic race cars:


Richard Wright's Beowulf, Roger Herrick's Taraschi, Stan Benbrook's 1968 Lynx.


Iam Garmey's Cooper going well, until his engine put a leg out of bed, big-end cap is arrowed.






A Corvette spinner.


And away again, but whoops! Too much right foot.




Some wit in the number-plates.

Here's some of the things we did in the last few days. Foxton has a very interesting Dutch windmill, made about 2002, in regular production grinding flour. We had a good chat to the Dutch people managing it. Interesting leading edge slotted flaps fitted to the blades! Sort of thing you see on a Jumbo Jet.

Foxton was pretty interesting, with a trolley bus museum and good collectible shops. We were trying to find some of the beach racing history of the Model A, so spoke to some people and got a few leads.



This is Foxton Beach, nice white sand, we expected black, it being West Coast.



We visited the wind farm again at Ashurst, the wind generators are so big they are quite unreal. Spot Julie standing at the base! It was blowing fairly hard, and they just made a gentle swishing sound.



Here is a spare blade, and look at this guy fitting one!


We were looking about with our Russian tank binoculars and the army spotted us and sent a tank!



We came back via Ohakune and stayed a night, it is completely shut down for the summer, most shops say 'opening in June'. No chairlifts running like at Whakapapa.

Call it obsession, but I had to have a better go at this comet. Tonight had better seeing, with a fairly clear layer above the bushfire murk which was lower in the sky.


This is uncropped, 300mm lens.


This is cropped and had brightness and contrast meddled with, and I also tried grayscale.

The brightest comet for a decade is about to pass behind the sun, and is currently visible in daylight (with binoculars) with magnitude -2. Be careful, you will be looking just east of the sun, with the sun behind a building. Right after the sun goes down would be best, if you have a good clear view west.


Here is the position of the comet today in Auckland from the Heavens Above site, I have rotated the detailed picture to line up with the stars that are unexpectedly in my photo at 3pm!



The comet is up to the right.

I went out at sunset at the top of Silkwood heights. Unfortunately the seeing was not great due to Australian bushfire smoke. The sun did a green flash as it set but it's not in the photos. The comet was there, look top left in the picture below, but it was not visible to the naked eye.




Here's a closeup.

Comet McNaught will pass behind the sun in the next few days and re-appear in our dawn skies. It may be very bright for some weeks for you early risers.

Here's how the car looked in the 1970's. It had a rear-mounted radiator, hence the air scoops. As it now has a later-type engine and disc brakes, that dates it as a 1963 car and it has to have a rollbar fitted so that's the current project. It will get a similar 'orchidy' paint colour.

This is probably Ugly-Brute's last gymkhana as it is now up for sale. It is running well.


Here's Al Martin's Fraser 7, and a very nice Datsun 240Z.