4wd

I hate sleeping bags.

They end up in knots around my legs.

And image wise - latte sipping city kids use sleeping bags, real men use swags. And I don't want my kids growing up like that so I made them some swags.

Here's how.

First, I bought a second hand industrial sewing machine from ebay - $160. It took me a bit of fiddling to get it sorted but now it goes like a diesel on gas.

Second, I got hold of an old canvas tent. It was a mate's. Someone had given it to him because it had no poles, so he gave it to me.

Third, I cut of the canvas tent and ran up four bed rolls.

Easy really.

And now my kids won't grow up to be latte sipping nancy city boys.

I decided to get a 'light my fire' scout fire lighting steel. It's designed to easily light a stove or fire even when wet. It's "approved by the International Survival Instructors Association" so should be a good bit of safety gear when playing in the wilderness.

So does it really work when wet? We tested it in this video

Many people buy a GPS start it up and expect the UTM coordinates to be correct straight out of the box. This may not be the case. You need to make sure that you've set up your unit properly before leaving the trail and heading into the wilderness camping.

The most important thing to check is the map datum. This is the reference system the map creators use to put the numbers on the map. They are not all the same.

Older Lands Department maps in New South Wales in Australia used to be based on AUS66. This is about 200 meters different what you're GPS will be using by default. That can mean quite a lot when looking for that water source or moving through cloud or a blizzard. So read your map and change your GPS to be the same as your map.

Note that the new series of Australian maps are based on Australian geodetic datum 94. This probably isn't in your GPS. For our purposes it's close enough to WGS84 which is the base GPS system. See http://www.icsm.gov.au/icsm/gda/wgs84fact.pdf

If you're ever in doubt use WGS84.