Great news to report today: we have passed scrutineering for the World Solar Challenge! All that remains is the qualifier on Saturday, and we’ll be ready to race.
This may come as a shock to some of you who are familiar with solar racing and followed along with our progress through NASC scrutineering last summer. For NASC, scrutineering lasts a whole week and involves several iterations of inspections of just one aspect of the car at a time. The scrutineering for WSC is quite different: the car cycles through every scrutineering station all in the same appointment, so the whole process takes only a few hours.
You’ll remember that the last thing we did last night before leaving the shop was to pack the car into the crate to transport it to the building where scrutineering is held. We arrived at that building – a large air conditioned space called the Foskey Pavilion – around 7:30 this morning to unload the car for our 8 o’clock appointment with the officials.
First off, we had to register our team members and outfit the car with the official race logo. This year, the World Solar Challenge became part of a larger competition called the Global Green Challenge, which incorporates other experimental and electric vehicles as well. Ra 7’s rear fairing now sports a giant green sticker advertising the Global Green Challenge where our NASC logo used to be.
Next, the body and array of the car were weighed and measured to make sure that we were within the regulations for size. While Ra 7 was breezing through the body and sizing stations inside the pavilion, our support vehicles were going through their own inspections out in the parking lot. Mark Evans, our head safety officer, ensured that our vehicles were equipped with safety equipment, first aid kits, traffic control equipment, and all of the required signage. Principia has long been known in solar racing for its safety, and last year’s team earned the Safety Award, so a quick pass in this station was not surprising.
Inside, it was the drivers who were tested next. Tom Brownell, Peter Chaney, Katie Farquhar, and Justin Sinichko – the same team of drivers we had in NASC – weighed in, registered their ballast, and received the special green wristbands that identify them as our drivers. All of the drivers also had to demonstrate that they could exit the car in under 10 seconds (the egress test), and half of them also demonstrated ingress, or getting into the car in less than 15 seconds. These might seem like odd things to test, but each serves a specific purpose. The egress test is clearly useful should an emergency arise; it is important for all of our drivers to know how to get out of the car quickly. The ingress test is a new addition this year, and the goal behind it is to simulate getting into a normal car.
WSC created a few regulations this year that encourage teams to make their cars more practical, in fact. In addition to ingress, the regulations also require a 27-degree seating angle for the driver. In the past, solar cars have been designed as flat as possible to have as much cell area on the top of the car as possible. Inside these flat cars, drivers lay almost entirely horizontally in order to look out the windshield, and for Principia cars at least, they had to drive with two joysticks at the hip because they could not fit a regular steering wheel. Now, drivers must sit upright and steer with a wheel in front of them, more like a regular car.
Our drivers were quick to prove their ingress and egress skills, and our custom-designed and hand-made steering wheel checked out, but we ran into a snag with the seating angle. Despite the fact that our seat was designed to meet the required 27-degree angle for NASC (and did pass that station in 2008), race officials here found the angle to be 29 degrees, with our drivers reclining just a bit too far. The car progressed to the next scrutineering station, but it could not pass until that angle had been corrected.
Next, with a driver in the car, we had to demonstrate the turn signals, brake lights, and horn; measure the driver’s eye height and the protection of the roll cage; and prove that our hand brake could physically stop the car from rolling should the mechanical brakes fail. Here again, we ran into a bit of a hiccup. When our driver pulled the handle for the parking brake, a wire snapped, and the mechanism did not function as we’d planned. This was one more small problem we would need to sort out before we would be allowed to race.
Progress through the final three stations – mechanical, electrical, and batteries – was slow and quiet. Our team’s typical protocol for scrutineering is that only two or three people are present with the car while the inspections are taking place. The other team members stand out of the way and keep quiet; we don’t want the race officials to feel crowded by a team of 20 students all eager to answer their questions at the same time. In the Foskey Pavilion, this arrangement was easy because there was a mezzanine above the scrutineering floor where team members, other teams awaiting their turn, and visitors could watch the inspections without being in the way.
The mechanical and electrical inspections involved John Broere and Tom Brownell answering the officials’ questions as they scrutinized every bit of the car. It’s their job to make sure the cars are safe to drive and road-worthy, but they are also highly qualified engineers in the field who have great advice. We were not required to make any major changes in these areas in order to pass scrutineering, but we were fortunate to hear the officials’ suggestions for how to improve our car, and we’re grateful that they took their time double checking our work.
At the battery station, Ra 7’s last stop in her journey around the pavilion floor, our battery configuration checked out, the correct battery pack weight was confirmed, and the officials sealed our pack to prevent future tampering. Our final hang-up occurred at this step, though. We’ve split our battery pack in two: the main pack and a small sub-pack that runs the Battery Protection System, and we had not foreseen the need to seal the smaller sub-pack in addition to the large pack. (To seal the pack, officials thread fine twine through holes in the battery box sides and over the tops of the battery cells to prevent teams from trying to gain extra power by switching out battery modules.) The sub-pack still needed some tweaking, so we were not prepared to seal it at that time.
We had essentially three problems to fix: the seating angle, the parking brake, and the battery sub-pack, along with a couple other minor adjustments, before we could officially pass scrutineering. And so, the team set to work. We toted tools and materials in from the vans, working quickly and quietly in a corner of the pavilion floor. In no time, we had the car ready to scrutineer again (all except the batteries). On the second round, Ra 7 passed every test. The battery sub-pack still needed work, but the car itself was ready to be loaded back into the crate and returned to our shop. All we had left to do was to finish the battery work and return to the Foskey Pavilion with that small box before 5 o’clock – the rest of our scrutineering was over!
We left the building triumphant (and it was fortunate we felt so upbeat since we were heading back out into the heat of our un-air-conditioned shop!). The whole scrutineering process took only a few hours, and we were able to meet every requirement quickly and smoothly.
Tom and John spent the afternoon finishing up the battery sub-pack, and by 5:00 p.m. we had officially passed scrutineering for WSC. With that milestone behind us, we’re looking forward to testing the car on the track tomorrow and then qualifying the car and proving its dynamic handling on Saturday.
Looking for photos? Check out the photos page for the photo album titled Scrutineering. Our webmaster, David Crabill, has been diligently adding new albums nearly every day this past week to show you our progress.
And don’t forget, you can hear more details about our progress from me and other team members every afternoon at 3:30 p.m. Central time on Principia Internet Radio. The show is live at that time – it’s 6 a.m. for us! – so you can call in questions, too. We’d love to hear from you!
English
Hello, Solar Friends!
Great news to report today: we have passed scrutineering for the World Solar Challenge! All that remains is the qualifier on Saturday, and we’ll be ready to race.
This may come as a shock to some of you who are familiar with solar racing and followed along with our progress through NASC scrutineering last summer. For NASC, scrutineering lasts a whole week and involves several iterations of inspections of just one aspect of the car at a time. The scrutineering for WSC is quite different: the car cycles through every scrutineering station all in the same appointment, so the whole process takes only a few hours.
You’ll remember that the last thing we did last night before leaving the shop was to pack the car into the crate to transport it to the building where scrutineering is held. We arrived at that building – a large air conditioned space called the Foskey Pavilion – around 7:30 this morning to unload the car for our 8 o’clock appointment with the officials.
First off, we had to register our team members and outfit the car with the official race logo. This year, the World Solar Challenge became part of a larger competition called the Global Green Challenge, which incorporates other experimental and electric vehicles as well. Ra 7’s rear fairing now sports a giant green sticker advertising the Global Green Challenge where our NASC logo used to be.
Next, the body and array of the car were weighed and measured to make sure that we were within the regulations for size. While Ra 7 was breezing through the body and sizing stations inside the pavilion, our support vehicles were going through their own inspections out in the parking lot. Mark Evans, our head safety officer, ensured that our vehicles were equipped with safety equipment, first aid kits, traffic control equipment, and all of the required signage. Principia has long been known in solar racing for its safety, and last year’s team earned the Safety Award, so a quick pass in this station was not surprising.
Inside, it was the drivers who were tested next. Tom Brownell, Peter Chaney, Katie Farquhar, and Justin Sinichko – the same team of drivers we had in NASC – weighed in, registered their ballast, and received the special green wristbands that identify them as our drivers. All of the drivers also had to demonstrate that they could exit the car in under 10 seconds (the egress test), and half of them also demonstrated ingress, or getting into the car in less than 15 seconds. These might seem like odd things to test, but each serves a specific purpose. The egress test is clearly useful should an emergency arise; it is important for all of our drivers to know how to get out of the car quickly. The ingress test is a new addition this year, and the goal behind it is to simulate getting into a normal car.
WSC created a few regulations this year that encourage teams to make their cars more practical, in fact. In addition to ingress, the regulations also require a 27-degree seating angle for the driver. In the past, solar cars have been designed as flat as possible to have as much cell area on the top of the car as possible. Inside these flat cars, drivers lay almost entirely horizontally in order to look out the windshield, and for Principia cars at least, they had to drive with two joysticks at the hip because they could not fit a regular steering wheel. Now, drivers must sit upright and steer with a wheel in front of them, more like a regular car.
Our drivers were quick to prove their ingress and egress skills, and our custom-designed and hand-made steering wheel checked out, but we ran into a snag with the seating angle. Despite the fact that our seat was designed to meet the required 27-degree angle for NASC (and did pass that station in 2008), race officials here found the angle to be 29 degrees, with our drivers reclining just a bit too far. The car progressed to the next scrutineering station, but it could not pass until that angle had been corrected.
Next, with a driver in the car, we had to demonstrate the turn signals, brake lights, and horn; measure the driver’s eye height and the protection of the roll cage; and prove that our hand brake could physically stop the car from rolling should the mechanical brakes fail. Here again, we ran into a bit of a hiccup. When our driver pulled the handle for the parking brake, a wire snapped, and the mechanism did not function as we’d planned. This was one more small problem we would need to sort out before we would be allowed to race.
Progress through the final three stations – mechanical, electrical, and batteries – was slow and quiet. Our team’s typical protocol for scrutineering is that only two or three people are present with the car while the inspections are taking place. The other team members stand out of the way and keep quiet; we don’t want the race officials to feel crowded by a team of 20 students all eager to answer their questions at the same time. In the Foskey Pavilion, this arrangement was easy because there was a mezzanine above the scrutineering floor where team members, other teams awaiting their turn, and visitors could watch the inspections without being in the way.
The mechanical and electrical inspections involved John Broere and Tom Brownell answering the officials’ questions as they scrutinized every bit of the car. It’s their job to make sure the cars are safe to drive and road-worthy, but they are also highly qualified engineers in the field who have great advice. We were not required to make any major changes in these areas in order to pass scrutineering, but we were fortunate to hear the officials’ suggestions for how to improve our car, and we’re grateful that they took their time double checking our work.
At the battery station, Ra 7’s last stop in her journey around the pavilion floor, our battery configuration checked out, the correct battery pack weight was confirmed, and the officials sealed our pack to prevent future tampering. Our final hang-up occurred at this step, though. We’ve split our battery pack in two: the main pack and a small sub-pack that runs the Battery Protection System, and we had not foreseen the need to seal the smaller sub-pack in addition to the large pack. (To seal the pack, officials thread fine twine through holes in the battery box sides and over the tops of the battery cells to prevent teams from trying to gain extra power by switching out battery modules.) The sub-pack still needed some tweaking, so we were not prepared to seal it at that time.
We had essentially three problems to fix: the seating angle, the parking brake, and the battery sub-pack, along with a couple other minor adjustments, before we could officially pass scrutineering. And so, the team set to work. We toted tools and materials in from the vans, working quickly and quietly in a corner of the pavilion floor. In no time, we had the car ready to scrutineer again (all except the batteries). On the second round, Ra 7 passed every test. The battery sub-pack still needed work, but the car itself was ready to be loaded back into the crate and returned to our shop. All we had left to do was to finish the battery work and return to the Foskey Pavilion with that small box before 5 o’clock – the rest of our scrutineering was over!
We left the building triumphant (and it was fortunate we felt so upbeat since we were heading back out into the heat of our un-air-conditioned shop!). The whole scrutineering process took only a few hours, and we were able to meet every requirement quickly and smoothly.
Tom and John spent the afternoon finishing up the battery sub-pack, and by 5:00 p.m. we had officially passed scrutineering for WSC. With that milestone behind us, we’re looking forward to testing the car on the track tomorrow and then qualifying the car and proving its dynamic handling on Saturday.
Looking for photos? Check out the photos page for the photo album titled Scrutineering. Our webmaster, David Crabill, has been diligently adding new albums nearly every day this past week to show you our progress.
And don’t forget, you can hear more details about our progress from me and other team members every afternoon at 3:30 p.m. Central time on Principia Internet Radio. The show is live at that time – it’s 6 a.m. for us! – so you can call in questions, too. We’d love to hear from you!
Cheers,
Karen