Hello, Solar Friends!

We’ve had another record-breaking day here in the Outback. Ra 7 traveled 615 km (382 miles) today, our longest day so far this race,  Ra 7’s 2nd longest day overall (after one day during NASC 2008), and the 4th longest day in Principia solar car racing history. This 615 km trek has placed us more than two-thirds of the way to Adelaide, positioned between the control points in Coober Pedy and Glendambo, still in sixth place.

We started the day with a bang. We pulled onto the Stuart Highway right at 8:00, and we sped right up to 85-90 kph (about 55 miles per hour). After last night’s battery pack repairs, the car was in much better shape for fast driving, and we had surprising success with the weak morning sunshine.

Not long into the morning, we had our first roadside stop when two things happened. First, the back door of the lead van suddenly popped open, dumping a water jug into the road, and second, an important connection in the BPS jiggled loose and shut off power to the car. In the solar car, Justin Sinichko coasted gently to the shoulder just behind the water jug, and the team (led by the safety crew, of course) piled out of the vans. While Tom Brownell and John Broere fixed up the battery pack, David Crabill and Ross Vincent rigged up a way to keep the back door of lead closed. The whole stop took about 15 minutes, and then we were back on the road and zooming once more.

Around 9:40 a.m., we pulled into the control point at Kulgera, and we left again ten minutes later, right on schedule. At that point, we had 412 km to Coober Pedy, the longest leg of the race. During that leg, we crossed the border into South Australia from the Northern Territory, passed the 2,000 km mark signifying that we’d finished two-thirds of the race, and took a 10-minute break at the Cadney Homestead for a bit of charging and a driver change. With Peter Chaney behind the wheel, we got back on the road.

As the trees disappeared, the Outback became what most of us imagined it to be – empty. On our way to Coober Pedy, the Opal Capital of the World, we passed by hundreds of individually owned opal mines. We also crossed an Australian landmark, the dog fence. The dog fence stretches 7,000 km from east to west to keep dingoes out of the southern portions of Australia, where sheep farming is prominent. Our observer informed us that the part of the fence that we see – a 6-foot chain link fence with wooden posts – is only half of it. The fence extends the same distance down into the ground to keep the dingoes from digging under it, as well. Maybe it was just because we hadn’t seen anything but sparse grass and scrubby bushes for hours, but we were excited to drive past the longest fence in the world.

As Peter drove us out of our Coober Pedy control point around 3:40 p.m., we had another brief issue with the battery pack. The same connection that had come loose this morning was acting up again. However, we tacked it back in place and were quickly on our way with just over an hour left to drive.

At the end of the day, it’s sometimes hard to find a place to stop for the night where we have good east and west exposure for charging combined with a decent place to camp.  This evening as we were driving along, there were steep, rocky ditches on either side of the road. It seemed unlikely that we would find a safe place for the car to pull off without risking popping a tire, or worse.  As 4:55 rolled around, our Scout vehicle radioed back – they found a perfect spot, and we arrived there right at 5:00. Our journey has been full of these instances of circumstances working out just exactly how they need to, and we’re grateful for the reminder that all of our needs are met by the one Mind.

At tonight’s Wednesday evening testimony meeting (hosted by our team metaphysical head, Mark Evans), team leader Tom Brownell shared a similar demonstration with the team. Referring to the numbers that he and Matthew Piatt spend all day analyzing from the telemetry system, Tom told us that the numbers were improving, even when no physical changes had been made to the car. As a team, we’re working hard to keep our thought uplifted and to recognize that no part of Principia’s racing success has been the result of physical improvements. We race well when we keep our two team goals as our highest priority: glorify God and do our best. And so far, we’ve done a winning job of meeting those goals.

It looks like we’re out of the running for winning the race, though, for that honor has already been awarded team Tokai from Japan. The news of their arrival in Adelaide reached us this afternoon, and we hear that both Nuon and the University of Michigan are hot on their heels. Those first few teams were moving fast!
Speaking of the competition, we were visited this evening by a member of team Aurora. Rooted in Ford Australia, Aurora is recognized as one of the best solar car teams in the world, and for now, they’re about 45 minutes behind us. If we were excited for Michigan to be scouting out our team’s position in Omaha in 2008, just imagine our delight that Aurora considers us competition worth scouting! With a team like Aurora close behind us, our 6th place position is somewhat tenuous, but we remain committed to doing our best and helping other teams to do their best as well. We’ll keep running our race, and we wish them the best in completing their own.

At this point, we have about 745 km left in the race. Our final two checkpoints are in Glendambo and then Port Augusta, and we should arrive in Adelaide on Friday morning. I’ll keep you updated on our progress, but don’t forget to listen in to our radio updates on Principia Internet Radio, too! We broadcast live every afternoon at 3:30 p.m. Central time, and you’ll hear brief updates at the top of every hour.

Cheers,
Karen

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