Hello, Solar Friends!

We’ve finished our first day of racing! We traveled about 530 kilometers and have made camp for the night on the side of the Stuart Highway, just 100 k north of Dunmarra.

The race day started unexpectedly early. Instead of spacing teams out at one-minute intervals, the race officials released the cars in quick succession, and so Principia began the race just shortly after 8:30 this morning. Navigating through Darwin was not easy. With all the teams clumped together, there were a lot of slow-moving caravans to contend with, in addition to the regular Sunday morning traffic and the hundreds of spectators who lined the streets to see us off.

But Ra 7 wove her way through the streets to pass at least four teams before leaving the city limits. By the time the Stuart Highway dropped down to its typical two-lanes (compared to the four in Darwin), we were out on our own and cruising smoothly along.

As our most experienced driver, Tom Brownell was chosen to drive us out this morning. With a full battery pack, Ra 7 zipped down the road at a good clip. Until, that is, we started to notice some oddly low voltages in the battery pack. The array was turned on and the sunlight was strong, but the pack wasn’t charging like it should. The truck toting our crate zoomed ahead of the caravan to scout out a safe place to pull over, and we stopped for a quick electrical check.

Tom hopped out of the driver’s seat and began inspecting the battery pack and electrical connections. There, he found a startling (and slightly humorous) mistake: our array was not actually connected to our battery pack. In tinkering with the system last night, we had disconnected an essential link between the two, and it had never been reconnected. We took the opportunity to change drivers, and with Justin Sinichko in the car and the array actually connected this time, we pulled out again around 11:00 a.m. to continue down the track.

With the array turned on, the problems we were noticing in the battery pack entirely disappeared, and Justin was able to drive close to the speed limit the rest of the way to our first Control Point, just outside the town of Katherine. We pulled in around 1:40 p.m. for our required 30-minute stop to interact with the media and local spectators.

One regulation in this race that is different from NASC is that teams are not allowed to work on their cars during these media stops. This was an unfortunate rule for us this afternoon because just as we pulled into the checkpoint, our left front tire punctured and needed to be replaced. We had to wait half an hour before we could change it; the repair had to cut into our actual race time.

At the end of the 30 minutes, our pit crew performed a very quick tire change. (We were allowed to prepare our tools ahead of time.) To leave the Control Point, we changed drivers again and put Tom back in the car, and Tom drove through the evening til the end of the race day at 5:30.

At the checkpoint, we learned our standing in the race so far. We had moved from our starting position of 12th up to 8th, though we had two teams right on our tail. The standings have changed a bit since then – we passed a team or two and were passed a few times as well – but our position is looking good for just day one.

At the end of the race day, we settled on the side of the road, threw up some tents, and got to work tweaking a few things on the car. Bob and Debbie Brownell cooked us the best meal we could dream of in the Outback – gourmet burritos! And as it is Sunday, we also took time out for church.

Now I’m writing this email as everyone is settling in for bed. When I finish, I’ll connect to our satellite internet link – a portable internet café, essentially, that we brought with us to Australia thanks to a generous donation from a company called CapRock who provides satellite communications to oil rigs. From my internet connection here, this message will travel to our solar car contact in the states, James Koval, a junior member of the team who’s taking care of business at home. James will send it out to you and our long list of supporters, then post it to our website, too. It’s such a production, I’m grateful for all the help I’m getting to get you your solar car news!

Speaking of our website, I have one last message for you from David Crabill, our web developer. David stayed busy keeping the site up to date while we stayed in Darwin, and there are a few fun new features. If you’ve visited the website recently, you’ve noticed our GPS tracker, showing you our exact position along the race route on the homepage. You may not have noticed the link on the right-hand side of the screen to the GPS tracking device itself. On that page, you can see a complete map of all the stops we’ve made so far, not just our current position. You can also use Google links embedded in our site to see the street view of the map – as if you were standing on the side of the Stuart Highway with us! David also wants to remind those of you who read these updates on the website – feel free to leave comments!

Cheers,
Karen

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