Enjoyable birthday present

I know birthdays are never wished to members on EO these days but I recently took delivery of a present from a group of EOers in the form of an armoured vehicle driving afternoon. I had a birthday with the round digit at the end, type birthday and an inventive person thought up the "let's give John an experience" sort of pressie. I have no doubt that there are people on EO that have spent their lives driving these though.

Along with a Big Card all signed I eventually managed to get a mutually agreeable day, but not until after the bullet proof Saracen blew an engine and had it's gear box serviced.

I had some tuition with theory to start on the pre-selector gear box before driving the Ferret Scout car first. It was the sporty machine. Five speeds forward and reverse. This one had been driven at 130 kph forwards on one occasion. They run better when the gear box gets warm as the gear train of boxes is quite extensive.

After driving the Ferret for a while and going solo, I got further instruction in the Saracen. A Saracen is a 10.5 tonne armoured personnel carrier. The Ferret was only 4.5 tonne. The Saracen had 8 cyliners of a Rolls Royce systems and the Ferret 6. The Saracen lumbered everywhere. Howard the tutor and owner, got on fine but I was a bit big for the throw of the engagement pedal. You can find out more at The Collection

For those who don't know pre-selector gear boxes, you select the next required gear, and just before you need it, you depress the engagement pedal - two seconds down and then let it up. It is easy to look at your terain and decide the next gear. It was a problem with the size of my feet and the placement of the pedal. I mention my size, I was about 193cm and I guess a little shorter these days, my feet had to fit inside part of the body work and the space was for size 9 max I reckon.

I wouldn't mind a Ferret really and if I didn't need some cash, lined up for something else, they could be useful about here some times, just great at spotlighting times


Where is the insurgency now, as we are ready, aren't we?


Now if I swung this turret around I could shoot you off your feet


I can tell you I had an enjoyable afternoon anyway and some really good memories