About us -
by Annette Flottwell
includes all the bits you never wanted to ask about this club. Here you can see all who make these pages.
The Internet Landrover Club was founded officially on February 22nd 2001 by Alain, Annette and Dadu. Information, repair and maintenance manuals, stories and pictures about Landrovers of every type and model, from the late forties till this day are published www.orldwide. Your e-mails informed us that drivers of other vehicles like our humour pages, roadbooks and travel hints, too.
Your contributions, opinions and wishes are important !
This site is maintained daily, we try to add new pages to every possible section we can think of. Your feedback is very important to us, you can help us suggesting additions or even new sections. Please don't hesitate to report all mistakes, like broken links or typos. All articles and picturesare most welcome, preferably in English.We can answer to questions in various languages. Please check below who can correspond in which tongue. We can also cope with Portuguese, Italian, Swedish and Srpskohrvatsko but don't expect us to write back in these languages. If in doubt, write to our foreign languages section.
The
club has no sponsors at all and needs your financial support. Membership
is at the moment only 10 US Dollars /Euros per year. Members can access
a special members page which includes advanced repair and conversion information,
roadbooks and some surprises. Some of our members are
introduced here, we would like more of your stories!
Who had the idea
Alain Hoffmann,
the president and webmaster, has been the webmaster of the Landroverclub
of Luxembourg for years, so his vast HTML-collection of Landrover articles
was already based on a solid fully working site. On a cold day he waited
for his mate to rescue him and the nicely stuck Discovery from a snow
and mud quagmire. As he was waiting in the cold, he had plenty of time
to think. Sharing mishaps and adventures like this with Landrover drivers
all over the world, would be easily possible on the web.
He won his mate Dadu on the spot for the idea, after he had been towed
out. Two days later he talked me into helping him, never mentioning how
much work it would be - but then it happened to be more fun than work.
Who we are:
Alain
(43) the webmaster is an occupational safety and health advisor. This is how he learned to write these well-founded
repair articles. 20 years experience in home repairs went into the maintenance guides. His own 90 V8 is heavily modified
and well prepared for the mud. His wife Nathalie owns a Disco 200 TDi which they use for longer trips. Alain has written
most of these pages. Mechanics , maintenance and modifications are his work. He is also our roadbook expert, as he has
been planning and organizing club tours for many years.
Since he has redesigned and extended the humour pages, you have contributed
many new entries. Give him more of this stuff!
Alain will
answer questions about coil-sprung vehicles in German, French, English
and Luxembourgish
Annette (42),who made this page, lives in France, is a toolmaker by trade and mastered in electronics later. Later I was a self employed IT consultant. Alain deemed that quite handy for the Internet club. Beside the graphic widgets, I have written the Australia pages, the veterans pages and some reports. Being the greediest of the bunch, they made me the cashier and members' corespondent. For the last two years I've also written articles for LRE, 4WD Automagazine, Off-Road and others. Could do with some more (photo)jounalistic work.
The Land-Rovers are two Stage One V8s born in 1976 (yes!!)
and in 1982 which can be found in the Stage One Register. My husband Takeo
had introduced me into the art of having fun in these very special Landrovers some years ago. My 4WD mechanical experience
was acquired the hard way fixing my 20 year old Toyota HJ 47 Station, but I'm now frequently enjoying my Series III.
Old Lucas electrics and weird LPG installations are always good for fun and surprises.
Long - distance travel hints are based on my personal experiences. That
shouldn't keep you from sending me articles about your favourite routes.
This is an urgent appeal to those of you living in South America, Africa
or Asia.
Membership questions, travel inquiries and pictures including the description addressed to Annette should be written in English, German, French or Spanish. Flemish is accepted for exercise. Anything in other languages should be addressed to Takeo.
Takeo,
56, has Ainu as his mother tongue and is fluent in English, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Russian, Italian and can
ask directions in Japanese. Also studied classical Latin and Greek.
Drove a lot of different vehicles in the past until he discovered the 109 V8 in 1980 aka Stage One, the best S III ever built and certainly the most enjoyable to drive.
Bought his Stage One new in 1981 and still owns it because of the innumerable ways of having and sharing fun in or under one of these and that is how he met the love of his life whom he recently married and for whom he found a sister truck last year, after a loooong search. It is now parked in very much the same private parking lot as that recently acquired Stage One mentioned earlier on this page. Heheh.
The guy in the picture is me, looking for a passage between a bogged 101 and some concrete blocks. Pic looks still good , it was taken just before a 3-hour winching and swearing exercise to get out of that mudhole during the Belgian National in 1999.
Used to belong to the ORDS staff as a driving instructor at Vollezele Mansion in Belgium where Camel Trophy and other expedition teams were trained. Ask me any S III and/or Stage One questions. There is no such thing as a stupid question but you may get a stupid answer.
He also writes some articles and stories for the club.
Matthias, our SII corespondent (29) is an optician by trade and is now studying optometry at the university of applied sciences in Jena. He got involved with historic vehicles driving a 1953 Borgward B2000A and now owns his Series IIA SWB, named Clarence, since September 2000.
Since he owns his Landrover, he got into greater and lesser trouble. He recently needed a recovery two times. Hence, he learned a lot about those old Series Landrovers and DIY.
He
owns some literature, most about the Series II / IIA and will use it to
help you.
Matthias prefers to receive questions in German or English, the latter might take a couple of days.
Joachim von Cranach is the president of the Landrovers of Switzerland and has been seen in various beautiful Series Landrovers. He will answer your Series One questions and all you might want to know about early Forward Controls in German, French or English. More about him soon.
Pierre-Benoit
CLEMENTis a French Army officer and has discovered the Landroverclub thanks to Annette during a trip in France organised by the Rétro Land Aventure from Lille. Obviously he is fond of Land Rovers and Series in particular. He owns a Swiss army SWB Series II built in 1964. Because he knows a little about html and php, he has offered me to program a secure member's access. He is also currently translating the first pages into French. He has recently developed a website about his year's cadets in the French military academy of Saint-Cyr : http://www.saint-cyr-cfl.org
Javier
de Mazarrasa Coll is a professional journalist specialized in
defence and military subjects with a special dedication to tanks, weapons
and armoured material, vehicles and artillery.
He
is the editor of the 'Revista Espagnol de Defensa' - Spanish Defence review-
and I wrote several books about armaments and vehicles.
He is also the chairman of the cultural Association TRUBIA, the circle
of friends of the armed forces, dedicated to the preservation, study and
history of the armoured units and their gear.
Since he has always been interested in 4x4s, he acquired last summer a
military Santana CL 88" Diesel, because it is very representative
for this category of 4x4. Read more about these Ligeros soon in our military
section.
His CL TT LR 88 served for ten years as the command vehicle of the Self Propelled Army Artillery Group leader. Later it became a training vehicle for the army logistic school, whence he bought it in excellent condition at a reasonable price.
Javier will answer all Santana and other Military Land Rover related questions in French or Spanish. English answers need Takeo's help, so they might take a bit longer.
David H. Feely is our new Freelander correspondent:
I am 17 years of age. I live
in the heart of Ireland. I'm a student. I'm newly appointed Freelander specialist. I've had an interest in 4x4 vehicles
since 1997ish but my interest started to concentrate on Land Rovers in late 1998 when I bought my first issue of Land
Rover Owner International to which I have been subscribing to ever since. I'm a member of Club
Land Rover Ireland . I've attended Billing for the last 2 years and will be there again this year. I'm currently
rebuilding a 1984 Land Rover Series III LWB Petrol.
Note: David has already been doing a great job since he started. He really knows a lot more about Freelanders than many older Land Rover owners!
Members and Meetings
During these first 14 months members from seventeen countries have joined the club. We are very much looking forward to new members from all over the world, waiting for the first Africans and Australians to join us. Worldwide, clubs are cooperating with ours, sharing pictures and translations. An Internet Club is 'meeting' daily on the web, of course. We have solved the web server problem now, but for important decisions, if some immediate response is necessary or we simply need help, our respective phone companies rejoice about the long international calls.
That doesn't keep us from meeting in person from time to time, whenever we have a good excuse for an excursion. Our vehicles don't exactly look cleaner after these encounters.
In January, we had another kind of meeting. Here you can read what it was all about.
The
picture shows five of those mentioned above in the claypit of Egemkapelle,
Belgium. From left to right:
Joachim von Cranach, three of his kids and his SII Red Danger; Nathalie , Alain
the webmaster and their 90 Tdi; Annette and Takeo with the 'new' Stage One
SIII; Mandy, Matthias and his SII Clarence.
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