Ten Years of CMPs online

[Rod Diery]

My Canadian Military Pattern site turn ten years old this month and I thought I might share the story of it's birth.

In early 1997 I acquired the remains of a Rover Light Armoured Car here in WA and soon found out that it was based on the Ford F60. However i couldn't find out much about these trucks. I knew that they were Canadian Military Pattern but getting info on them in the middle of the Western Australian bush was a bit difficult.

So I turned to Internet and tried a few searches with the primitive search engines of the day and came up with stuff all except pic of Keith Webb's F15A on Patrick Calnan's Swords and Ploughshares site. No data or info of any kind about the trucks at all.

So with my good mate Rod Lewis I decided to start up the first CMP web site in September 1997. I posted some messages on the old Milveh@skylee forum and slowly I started to get replies from around the world from all sorts of people with more and more material for the site. And the more I put on the site, the more stuff I was sent.

One of my earliest contacts was with the strangely named but ultimately very useful Geoff Winnington-Ball who proceeded to enlighten me on all things CMP and indeed all things Canadian.

Lots of other people helped me enormously as well, such as Brian Gough, Richard Notton, Nick Bullock, Brent Borschneck, Doug Greville, Rolf Ask, Bob Dimer, Alex Blair, Mike Kelly Don Dingwell, the list goes on and on.

And some of the legendary names in the CMP world came on board, Mike Cecil, Keith Webb, Peter J Ford, Hanno Spoelstra, Dirk Leegwater, Phil Waterman and more, they all sent me pics, data and information that I was finding difficult to source.

And there are so many more that I can not remember, but I thank each and everyone of you.

So I guess what I am saying that we of the world wide CMP family all have something to celebrate. We have had an online presence for ten years. My humble site was the first of the many CMP resources on the WWW and I am immensely proud of that.

I am even more proud of what has followed such as Geoff's wonderful MLU Forum and the people out there who contribute so much to it. I hope in another ten years time that we will still all be sharing our love of CMPs with each other.

Once again I offer a sincere heartfelt thank you to you all for your help and support.

Regards
Rod

http://users.bigpond.net.au/blitz_trucks/cmp.html

[Keith Webb]

Ten years is a long time - and you beat me by about a month!

But keep up the good work - hope to see you at Corowa again some time.

[Alex Blair (RIP)]

Originally posted by Keith Webb
Ten years is a long time - and you beat me by about a month!

But keep up the good work - hope to see you at Corowa again some time.

Hi Rod...
Yep...You were my first customer in Australia..
I had gotten my site flogging CMP manuals up and running on the AFV News site and every time I would get a CMP query for manuals I would link them to your site....and then Jif got MLU up and running and I was the first one to post on the forum after he and his son posted the usual"Wow...!!!!!It's up....!!!!postings...and then I would link customers to your site and MLU forum and the rest is history...
Great job you ,Keith and Jif have done promoting the craft and you are all legendary around the CMP world..
Well done and thanks..
Mr.Manual

[Geoff Winnington-Ball (RIP)]

Amazing, what's happened since, isn't it? Hats off to you, Rod! MLU will be see its first decade passed in '08. Hard to believe indeed!

[Geoff Winnington-Ball (RIP)]

Enough of this " " nonsense... trying THIS:

[Max Hedges]

Rod your site was the first one I found on cmps and that was a few years ago, not sure when though. Since then I have had a lot of fun with these old trucks and have got to know a lot of other blitz colectors from all over thwe place
good stuff
Max

[hrpearce]

Rod when I got my blitz it was just going to be a useful workhorse, then I googled to find out some history, found your site then found Keith, then Howard told me about MLU, after that the bug bit me and I suffer withdrawel if I carn't work on the blitz at least once a week. Robert.

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Rod, I remember well finding your site for the first time. It and still is the on-line recognition guide for CMPs. Can't believe it has been ten years?!? Time flies when you're having fun, eh?

Keep at it mate!

Hanno