Hello, Solar Friends!

Joe, Steve, and I arrived in Darwin on Tuesday like we planned, but we also found a few surprises when we got here.

First, the truck we’d been driving for roughly 2,900 kilometers finally broke down as we putted into Darwin. We had just reached the outskirts of the city – and cell phone coverage, fortunately! – when the clutch stopped working altogether.

Meanwhile, back in Brisbane, David, Peter, and Tom had missed their flight to Darwin and had to be re-routed through Cairns to arrive here at 9:00 p.m. (instead of their scheduled 1:00 p.m.).

When the truck broke down, we called John Broere, who had arrived in Darwin on Monday. John was supposed to be picking up the other guys from the airport at the time, but thanks to their delay in Brisbane, John was available to rescue us in his rental car while a repairman came to look at the truck.

After a bit of tinkering, the repairman was able to get the truck rolling again, though it was only a temporary fix. We drove it to the qualifying track at Hidden Valley, where we’ll have a covered work space for the next week, and left it there for the evening. We picked up David, Peter, and Tom from the airport, and spent a quiet night back at our home base in Darwin, the City Gardens Apartments.

On Wednesday morning, we all headed to Hidden Valley to unpack the crate so that we could send the truck in for further repairs. When we opened the crate, we found yet another surprise. At some point during the drive up the track, the crate had begun listing to one side, wrenching the screws out of one of our interior structural supports. One of the upper shelves inside the crate had collapsed, and we found a two-by-four (and a lot of our gear) resting on the back spine of the solar car.

The team calmly and quickly propped up the fallen beam and removed the gear from above the car, then carefully hefted Ra 7 off the trailer and into our bay at Hidden Valley. The damage to the solar cells was remarkably slight, and the carbon fiber body barely showed a dent. Thanks to a strong design and reinforced construction, plus the daily protective support from within the team and from friends like you, we’ll need only to replace a couple cell modules in order to be back in top racing shape.

But Ra 7’s journey across the ocean left us with two final surprise challenges: mold and rust. The mold formed mainly on two sheets of masonite installed beneath the car and spread very little from there as the rest of the crate was made of pressure-treated lumber. A few of the team’s tents and camp chairs got moldy as we were unloading, as well as Peter, whose job it was to crawl around inside the crate while we unloaded it. With a little bleach and sunshine, the tents should be fine, and Peter has now had a shower and a change of clothes, too. The mold is no longer an issue.

The salty humidity of the Pacific Ocean caused many of the steel parts of Ra 7’s chassis to rust over. Since the frame itself, and most of the other metal components on the car, are aluminum, the rust primarily affected only nuts and bolts in the suspension and steering, and we were able to remove those one by one to clean with WD-40. Having removed the rust, we’re ready to proceed with more involved mechanical work on the car.

Meanwhile, back at City Gardens, our electrical experts, John and Tom, are finishing the wiring for the supplemental battery pack and for the Battery Management System (BMS). Former Team and Car Leader Seth Cadell has been working on the BMS from Oregon, where he is in graduate school. Tom, also an Oregonian, brought with him to Australia the work that Seth had done, and together with John he will complete that system for monitoring our batteries during the race. Once that work is done, these guys will also assemble our main battery pack, which was dismantled for shipping.

All things considered, the car is in good shape, and we’re on track to have it running soon.

Before I sign off, Joe asked me to share this one info card story with you from our stay in Alice Springs a few days ago. The morning we left town, we spent about an hour repacking the truck, and we had a few local spectators as we worked. I had given info cards to two children watching from a picnic table, and they were showing their father excitedly and pointing to the crate. A couple minutes later, the man approached me with a AU$20 bill. He held it out to me, asking, “You’re with the solar car?” I told him I was, and he thrust the bill toward me again. “For your expenses,” he said. I thanked him, and he walked back to his children to keep watching us work.

We met a lot of genuine kindness and support as we traveled up the track, but this heartfelt donation stands out. We’re grateful for every small show of support and for the open-armed welcome we’ve received from the people of Australia. We hope to give back as much love and enthusiasm as we have received.

Cheers,
Karen

P.S. The pictures that we have posted so far are in the photo album Moving and Unpacking the Crate.

[Translate]