I got so fed up of not being able to disable comments on my photos on picasa web albums ive bitten the bullet and purchased a Flickr account.

This means I can now put my photo galleries back up without having to worry about moderating over 100 spam comments a day on the site.

The downside is many of the pictures used in my previous posts (that were hosted on Picasa) now show as a black box with a white circle in it. Sooo, I now have to re-edit my all of my original posts to get the images to re-display – OH JOY!

But at least I don;t have to worry about spam comments any more.

Will tidy up all previous posts over the next few weeks so they look like they originally did.

Well, this years trip to Garmisch (my first time there) was absolutely brilliant overall. CB comms turned out to be a complete pile of poop and at some point, due to major frustration, I removed the antenna and summarily dumped it on a bin somewhere in France. Max range in ideal conditions was about 500 yards which was just plain rubbish. More on that in a forthcoming post.

Overall the trip was superb. Took a group of mates down through the Vosges mountains in France, then across the southern part of the Black Forest, along lake Konstanz up into Austria to Garmisch. Returning via Italy, Lago Di Resia, the Stelvio Pass, Lago Di Livigno and same route back through Germany and France for a different perspective. Apart from Friday 1st July, the weather was pretty good overall, and we managed to take in the amazing Neuschwanstein castle while we were there.

The Motorrad Days event itself was really good and very well laid on. Great entertainment in the evenings, great catering facilities and lots to see and do. My only slight grumble is that washing and showering facilities could of been slightly better near the far end of the camping ground. Simple things like having hooks to hang your clothes up would of been good.

Got plenty of HD video footage of various parts of the route (including the scary northern ascent of the Stelvio Pass) and pics too so will post those up shortly, along with what my next comms solution is going to be.

Put together a quick 1080p High Def intro vid which you can see in the latest video section on the right (Watch on youtube for better quality)

Managed to get round to fitting this on the GS today. Found some self adhesive foam padding which went round the grab rail to protect it nicely from the bracket and bolts:

The circular black bit on the next pic is the Artificial Ground Plane (AGP) that removes the issue of a lack of metal on a bike for a normal grounding solution:

The cabling was nicely routed down the right-hand side of the bike and up away from potential heat sources, following existing wiring looms up to the headstock. The small amount of excess is then loosely looped round the bracket behind the screen out of harms way.

Just need to sort out an additional power solution for the CB radio and get the SWR meter on it all and that’s the comms sorted for the trip in July

The Hepco & Becker black engine bars arrived a few days ago and I was going to fit them today, but looking at the instructions I don’t think i’m going to risk fitting them myself – I’m bound to balls something up

All the bits I ordered from Nippy Normans have now been fitted. Thanks to the tips on the www.ukgser.com forums, I’ve also been able to make up a custom power lead for my Navman S50 unit. Black engine bars have arrived and should be fitted this weekend. Here’s some pics of the mods so far:

Fender Extender:

Headlamp Protector:

Mudsling:

Oil Cooler Guard:

Unfortunately due to the amount of spam comments I have to keep moderating (over 100 a day), i’ve decided to disable comments on my website for the time-being until I find a workable solution.

Apologies to the genuine posters.