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WSC 2009
Posted on October 31, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Hello, Solar Friends! The race may have finished yesterday, but we couldn’t leave WSC-mode just yet. Today’s main task was to clean out the vehicles and repack all of our tools, gear, and equipment in the crate. Simultaneously, we had contingents writing postcards to our top donors and handing out info cards down at Victoria Square, where the car remained on display for the public. The whole team returned to the square in the afternoon to show off the car to visitors and chat with members of the others teams that we had not seen all week. We also lined up our car with the University of Michigan’s for a photo shoot in front of the fountain. (We tried to include MIT and Stanford also, all of the teams from the U.S., but they had already left for the day.) Our shared elation at having finished the challenge heightened the camaraderie among all of the teams, and it was fun to share stories of our challenges and victories along the route. The final official WSC event was the awards ceremony this evening. The ceremony opened with a traditional Aboriginal performance – song and dance celebrating the land and its animals. The goals of the Global Green Challenge complement the values expressed by Aborigines about the environment, so the juxtaposition was fitting. In addition to seventh place, Principia walked away with an arguably higher honor: the Safety Award. Race officials have long praised Principia’s dedication to safety, and it was gratifying to have that recognized one more time. At the end of the night, the team celebrated Halloween here in Australia by dressing up – like other solar car teams, that is! At the reception after the awards ceremony, the long-awaited team shirt swap took place. No one wants to go home with a week’s worth of their own team’s shirts at the end of a race, so we trade with the other teams to remember new friends and snag the coolest uniforms. By the end of the evening, it’s impossible to tell who’s on which team! Principia team members came away with t-shirts, polos, baseball caps, and even team pants from all of our favorite competitors. We all felt like kids who’d gone trick-or-treating as we compared our spoils on the way home to Adelaide Shores. The last chore for the night was to figure out how to stow our new treasures into our luggage and finish packing things up with the car. Most of the team is heading back to the states early tomorrow morning – in time for classes on Monday. A small group of graduates and faculty (Tom Brownell, Peter Chaney, David Crabill, Steve Shedd, and I) will remain in Australia for a few more days to ship off the crate and then visit Huntingtower, a school for Christian Scientists in Melbourne. All of us have enjoyed our time in Australia immensely, and I think I can speak for the whole team when I say we’re really not ready to leave! Before we do leave, I want to take this final opportunity to thank all of the supporters whose donations helped us get here in the first place. I’m not exaggerating when I say we couldn’t have done it without you. I hope you’ve all enjoyed keeping up with our progress and that you’ll continue to monitor our website for future updates and even more photos. We’re grateful for your ongoing support. Over and out,
Posted on October 30, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Hello, Solar Friends! The race is over, and the results are in: we’ve officially come in 7th place in the World Solar Challenge class of the 2009 Global Green Challenge, behind Tokai (Japan), Nuon (Netherlands), Michigan (USA), Sunswift (Australia), MIT (USA), and Aurora (Australia). As I explained yesterday, our goal for the morning was to push the car as hard and fast as possible, hoping to cross the finish line with an empty battery pack. Justin Sinichko put the pedal to the carbon, and with Matthew Piatt and Tom Brownell in the Chase van giving instructions, we flew down the road at more than 100 kph – definitely running the pack down, like we planned. Weather reports led us to believe we’d be operating under cloud cover for most of the morning, but those predictions never panned out. We had clear, bright sunshine for most of the way, and we were able to travel much faster than we’d anticipated. Several times, the Lead van had trouble staying far enough out in front of the solar car because it was moving too fast! The morning and the kilometers zoomed past, and we crossed the official end of timing line at 10:13 a.m., securing our position in the standings. From there, we still had to navigate through the city of Adelaide to complete the course and parade across the ceremonial finish line in Victoria Square. Once we got close, the team piled out of the vans and into the world’s first solar bus, which led Ra 7 to its final destination. In the square, the team surrounded the car on the ground, and we all walked Justin and Ra 7 across the finish line, to the raucous cheers of spectators, officials, and other teams. Awaiting us at the end of the walk was a majestic fountain in the center of the square, and as the numb euphoria of finishing the race started to wear off, we realized the other teams greeting us were chanting, “Fountain! Fountain!” Justin was the first to make the plunge, and he came out dripping and looking for company. About half the team ended up drenched, laughing and splashing in the fountain in celebration of finally making it to Adelaide. Members of the other teams that had already arrived joined us in the wet and wild cheering and dunking, and the whole square was bright with sunlight and good cheer. We steered Ra 7 into a display tent to one side, and then spent a few hours talking with the public and hearing racing stories similar to our own from the other teams. No other solar cars arrived on the scene while we waited, and we’re still uncertain as to just how many teams finished the race without trailering. We’re looking forward to seeing the other teams tomorrow and hearing how our friends on the other 20-odd teams fared. In the meantime, we took some time to ourselves as a team to explore the non-solar-car-related wonders that Australia has to offer. Our destination was the Cleland Wildlife Park, where we saw, petted, and fed kangaroos, koalas, emus, giant pelicans, wombats, echidnas, dingoes, Tasmanian devils, monitor lizards, and wallabies. Then it was off to a celebratory dinner at Outback Jack’s on the beach, thanks to supporter John Chaney, who traveled all the way from Houston just to meet us at the finish line. Now the team is settled into the Adelaide Shores apartments (and grateful to be back in real beds!) for the next couple nights. We only have a day or so to pack everything up to ship back to the States, but for tonight, we’re happy to forget the work to come and bask in the joy of having run a good race. Cheers,
Posted on October 29, 2009 at 11:03 pm
Hello, Solar Friends! On our second to last day of racing, the team awoke to a sunrise only the Australian Outback could afford. To one horizon, the setting moon and dark starry sky were being chased away by the beginning of another day. In our beds (an assortment of Wal-Mart sleeping bags), we lay gazing at the two-toned sky through the roofs of our tents and a film of buzzing flies awaiting our inevitable exit. The traffic on the Stuart Highway was beginning to pick up again with the coming of the dawn, and we could hear our teammates stirring in the tents around us. These were the morning sights and sounds we’d gotten used to in the past few days, and this was our last morning to experience them in the Outback. We knew that by the end of the day we’d have reached civilization again. It was a bittersweet morning. With the team loaded up in the vans and ready to embark, the car’s treaded Dunlop tires gripped the warm pavement. The phrase “solar is rolling” echoed across the channel one radio frequency, and we were off the line, starting right on time at 8:00 a.m. Ra 7 got moving at a pretty good clip right off the bat with a well-charged battery pack and Tom Brownell behind the wheel. In no time at all, we’d made it to our control point in Glendambo. As we were charging in the parking lot, team Aurora pulled in, just about 15 minutes behind us. We left the control point with Justin Sinichko in the car and high hopes for the midday sun. The following drive between Glendambo and Port Augusta was hilly and scenic, and we passed a whole family of emus by the side of the road! We were making great time, and the car was performing the best it has yet. As we pulled into the town of Port Augusta just after 2:00 p.m., we hit some traffic and a few red lights – obstacles we’ve been fortunate not to see much of during this race. At one red light in town, the solar car had stopped on the line and could not get going again when the light turned green. “The accelerator pedal just isn’t working,” Justin radioed back to us. In moments, our head safety officer Mark Evans and car leader Peter Chaney were out of the van and at Ra 7’s sides to push her safely out of the intersection. Ra 7 rolled toward the side of the road and out of harm’s way, but it seemed the problems did not stop with the accelerator. The brake pedal had also gotten jammed, and Justin was unable to stop the car once it was rolling. Ra 7 coasted along the curb for a few feet, then came to a jostling halt against the bumper of the lead vehicle. With the safety crew flagging traffic and a team on the ground removing the upper body in a flash, we quickly saw that Justin was entirely unharmed, and the car itself suffered only the tiniest damage in the carbon fiber shell of the lower body. With those assurances, the team focused on discovering and solving the problem that had caused these mishaps in the first place. The braking issue required only an easy mechanical fix in the pedal, and the car immediately resumed braking safely and completely, as it should. After examining the accelerator pedal, we determined it was not a mechanical problem that had robbed Ra 7 of her acceleration. Our next guess was the motor controller. After replacing the motor controller with one that we borrowed from our racing friends at Rolla, we learned that this also was not the source of the breakdown. It seemed the motor itself was the culprit, and we radioed to Ken Pratt, who drives our truck and trailer, for him to bring us our spare motor. While waiting for the truck to arrive, we decided to move the car to a safer location than the side of the road since we’d be doing some major repairs. (Our motor is mounted to our single, foam-filled rear wheel, so putting in a new motor meant a difficult tire change around the rear suspension along with completely reinstalling the motor itself.) We happened to have stopped right in front of a residential driveway, and the homeowners had come out to the fence to see what the commotion was about. We didn’t even have to ask twice for these kind strangers to offer us the use of their driveway to complete our repairs away from the traffic. Their hospitality didn’t end there, though. As we worked, the family brought out jugs of ice cold water for us – a welcome relief from the heat. We believe now that the motor failure was caused by overheating due to excessive use of the regenerative braking feature – a much less concerning reason than many we could have imagined! Once the truck arrived with the spare, the repair went smoothly and quickly, considering its complexity. It took the team less than half an hour to replace the motor and the rear tire, a time that would be impressive even under the best of conditions. Altogether, we were stopped on the side of the road for just under an hour before we could finish the last three kilometers to the control point at Port Augusta. While we were stopped, team Aurora went cruising past us, and by the time we reached the check point, they were already on their way down the track again. It looks like we won’t be beating them this time, but we’re pretty satisfied that we were able to hold them at bay for so long this morning! The 30-minute media stop in Port Augusta seemed relaxed and uneventful after the motor change stop, and by 3:40 p.m. we were back on the road. The battery pack had had plenty of time to charge up during all the stops, and Justin was ready to get the car back up to speed and make up some lost time. The closer we got to Adelaide, the more natural features we’d been missing reappeared: bodies of water, trees, mountains, and even clouds. There was a little too much cloud cover in the late afternoon for solar racing at full speed, but by the end of the day we had logged another 572 km and gotten within 180 km of the official end of the race. At the end of the day, our 10-minute window of searching for the right place to stop for the night led us to an open field of straw with a gravel drive just off the highway. We pulled off into the dirt and set up the array stand, facing the setting sun. Soon the landowner came out to investigate, and he assured us that we were welcome to use that bit of his farmland to charge out batteries and work on the car until sunset. Our scout had found a campground farther down the road for our nighttime accommodations, but the farmer invited us back to his field for our morning charging and final preparations. It was our second run-in with selfless kindness from people we didn’t even know in just a few hours, and we were grateful to see this proof that our needs have already been met with love. We finished off the night with a hearty steak dinner at a local pub and a bittersweet sendoff to our media van driver (recently re-dubbed “Hollywood”) Sten Palmer, who had to return to her job in Port Headland. The team bedded down early with the car tucked into the crate to get a good night’s sleep before our final day. The plan for tomorrow is to really push the limits on our car to make it to the official end of timing with our battery pack almost completely drained. Once our time has stopped ticking and the race is officially finished, we will pause to charge up again and then wend our way into town to cross the ceremonial finish line in Adelaide around noon. As far as we know, we are currently in 7th place, and with team Twente about an hour behind us and team Aurora about an hour ahead of us, we don’t expect that to change. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s update about our last day of racing and then a final report on Saturday after the awards ceremony. And be sure to catch our last couple of radio shows, too. We’ll be broadcasting live on Princpia Internet Radio (www.principia.edu/radio) at 3:30 p.m. Central time on Thursday and Friday. As always, thanks for your ongoing support. We’re almost there! Cheers, P.S. My apologies for the late posting of this update. I told you the team bedded down early, and that included the keys to the vans – aka my access to our BGAN unit from CapRock, which gives us satellite internet. So it had to wait until the morning! Disclaimer: Due to differences in web browsers and email servers, some of the formatting, including spacing and punctuation, may not appear correctly in your email. To see these updates in their correct format, go to www.principia.edu/solar. And when you do, leave a comment! Hello, Solar Friends! On our second to last day of racing, the team awoke to a sunrise only the Australian Outback could afford. To one horizon, the setting moon and dark starry sky were being chased away by the beginning of another day. In our beds (an assortment of Wal-Mart sleeping bags), we lay gazing at the two-toned sky through the roofs of our tents and a film of buzzing flies awaiting our inevitable exit. The traffic on the Stuart Highway was beginning to pick up again with the coming of the dawn, and we could hear our teammates stirring in the tents around us. These were the morning sights and sounds we’d gotten used to in the past few days, and this was our last morning to experience them in the Outback. We knew that by the end of the day we’d have reached civilization again. It was a bittersweet morning. With the team loaded up in the vans and ready to embark, the car’s treaded Dunlop tires gripped the warm pavement. The phrase “solar is rolling” echoed across the channel one radio frequency, and we were off the line, starting right on time at 8:00 a.m. Ra 7 got moving at a pretty good clip right off the bat with a well-charged battery pack and Tom Brownell behind the wheel. In no time at all, we’d made it to our control point in Glendambo. As we were charging in the parking lot, team Aurora pulled in, just about 15 minutes behind us. We left the control point with Justin Sinichko in the car and high hopes for the midday sun. The following drive between Glendambo and Port Augusta was hilly and scenic, and we passed a whole family of emus by the side of the road! We were making great time, and the car was performing the best it has yet. As we pulled into the town of Port Augusta just after 2:00 p.m., we hit some traffic and a few red lights – obstacles we’ve been fortunate not to see much of during this race. At one red light in town, the solar car had stopped on the line and could not get going again when the light turned green. “The accelerator pedal just isn’t working,” Justin radioed back to us. In moments, our head safety officer Mark Evans and car leader Peter Chaney were out of the van and at Ra 7’s sides to push her safely out of the intersection. Ra 7 rolled toward the side of the road and out of harm’s way, but it seemed the problems did not stop with the accelerator. The brake pedal had also gotten jammed, and Justin was unable to stop the car once it was rolling. Ra 7 coasted along the curb for a few feet, then came to a jostling halt against the bumper of the lead vehicle. With the safety crew flagging traffic and a team on the ground removing the upper body in a flash, we quickly saw that Justin was entirely unharmed, and the car itself suffered only the tiniest damage in the carbon fiber shell of the lower body. With those assurances, the team focused on discovering and solving the problem that had caused these mishaps in the first place. The braking issue required only an easy mechanical fix in the pedal, and the car immediately resumed braking safely and completely, as it should. After examining the accelerator pedal, we determined it was not a mechanical problem that had robbed Ra 7 of her acceleration. Our next guess was the motor controller. After replacing the motor controller with one that we borrowed from our racing friends at Rolla, we learned that this also was not the source of the breakdown. It seemed the motor itself was the culprit, and we radioed to Ken Pratt, who drives our truck and trailer, for him to bring us our spare motor. While waiting for the truck to arrive, we decided to move the car to a safer location than the side of the road since we’d be doing some major repairs. (Our motor is mounted to our single, foam-filled rear wheel, so putting in a new motor meant a difficult tire change around the rear suspension along with completely reinstalling the motor itself.) We happened to have stopped right in front of a residential driveway, and the homeowners had come out to the fence to see what the commotion was about. We didn’t even have to ask twice for these kind strangers to offer us the use of their driveway to complete our repairs away from the traffic. Their hospitality didn’t end there, though. As we worked, the family brought out jugs of ice cold water for us – a welcome relief from the heat. We believe now that the motor failure was caused by overheating due to excessive use of the regenerative braking feature – a much less concerning reason than many we could have imagined! Once the truck arrived with the spare, the repair went smoothly and quickly, considering its complexity. It took the team less than half an hour to replace the motor and the rear tire, a time that would be impressive even under the best of conditions. Altogether, we were stopped on the side of the road for just under an hour before we could finish the last three kilometers to the control point at Port Augusta. While we were stopped, team Aurora went cruising past us, and by the time we reached the check point, they were already on their way down the track again. It looks like we won’t be beating them this time, but we’re pretty satisfied that we were able to hold them at bay for so long this morning! The 30-minute media stop in Port Augusta seemed relaxed and uneventful after the motor change stop, and by 3:40 p.m. we were back on the road. The battery pack had had plenty of time to charge up during all the stops, and Justin was ready to get the car back up to speed and make up some lost time. The closer we got to Adelaide, the more natural features we’d been missing reappeared: bodies of water, trees, mountains, and even clouds. There was a little too much cloud cover in the late afternoon for solar racing at full speed, but by the end of the day we had logged another 572 km and gotten within 180 km of the official end of the race. At the end of the day, our 10-minute window of searching for the right place to stop for the night led us to an open field of straw with a gravel drive just off the highway. We pulled off into the dirt and set up the array stand, facing the setting sun. Soon the landowner came out to investigate, and he assured us that we were welcome to use that bit of his farmland to charge out batteries and work on the car until sunset. Our scout had found a campground farther down the road for our nighttime accommodations, but the farmer invited us back to his field for our morning charging and final preparations. It was our second run-in with selfless kindness from people we didn’t even know in just a few hours, and we were grateful to see this proof that our needs have already been met with love. We finished off the night with a hearty steak dinner at a local pub and a bittersweet sendoff to our media van driver (recently re-dubbed “Hollywood”) Sten Palmer, who had to return to her job in Port Headland. The team bedded down early with the car tucked into the crate to get a good night’s sleep before our final day. The plan for tomorrow is to really push the limits on our car to make it to the official end of timing with our battery pack almost completely drained. Once our time has stopped ticking and the race is officially finished, we will pause to charge up again and then wend our way into town to cross the ceremonial finish line in Adelaide around noon. As far as we know, we are currently in 7th place, and with team Twente about an hour behind us and team Aurora about an hour ahead of us, we don’t expect that to change. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s update about our last day of racing and then a final report on Saturday after the awards ceremony. And be sure to catch our last couple of radio shows, too. We’ll be broadcasting live on Princpia Internet Radio (www.principia.edu/radio) at 3:30 p.m. Central time on Thursday and Friday. As always, thanks for your ongoing support. We’re almost there! Cheers, P.S. My apologies for the late posting of this update. I told you the team bedded down early, and that included the keys to the vans – aka my access to our BGAN unit from CapRock, which gives us satellite internet. So it had to wait until the morning!
Posted on October 29, 2009 at 1:21 am
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! 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,
Posted on October 27, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Hello, Solar Friends! We began this race just 12 degrees south of the equator in Darwin, and we have now traveled more than halfway to Adelaide, through Alice Springs and across the Tropic of Capricorn. The weather is telling; the humidity has vanished, and the chill of the nights and early mornings ensures us that we’ve left the tropics. Day three of racing has come to a close after 565 kilometers (about 350 miles) of driving by Justin and Tom. We began the day perfectly on time, leaving our campsite at precisely 8:00 a.m., and our stops throughout the day continued with similar efficiency. Our first Control Point was Barrow Creek, a gas station and pub about 130 km into our drive. On the way up the track a few weeks ago, Joe, Steve, and I stopped at Barrow Creek for lunch one afternoon. Along with the best Australian cheeseburgers we’d ever had (topped with bacon, barbeque sauce, a fried egg, beet root, and pineapple), we got an earful from the Barrow Creek pub owner, Mick, about the money papering the walls of his pub. In the 1960s, the story goes, cattle drovers were paid once a month, and they often spent all their money very quickly. To ensure that they would have enough cash for a drink as they were passing through town, these drovers began to leave money at the pubs – bills with their names written on them tacked to the wall. Over the years, the walls at Barrow Creek have been covered with bills – both Aussie and foreign – from passersby who’re continuing the tradition. When Joe, Steve, and I arrived, Mick told us this story and showed us all of the American money taped to the walls. He also produced from beneath the bar his collection of United States quarters. He had collected 25 of the 50 states so far, and he laid them out for us one by one, proudly pronouncing the name of each state he had collected. He didn’t yet have the quarters for either Illinois or Missouri, and he had never heard of an American $2 bill, so we left Barrow Creek a few weeks ago with a mission, and we made a few phone calls. Last week, Katie Farquhar, the team’s business manager, brought with her from the States 11 new state quarters and a crisp $2 bill for Mick from the Principia Solar Car Team. We signed our team name on the bill and gave it, with the quarters, to our scout vehicle to gift to Mick when they arrived ahead of the caravan. Mick was delighted, and we heard him bragging later to some patrons at the bar about having 36 of the state quarters! It was a heart-warming interaction we won’t soon forget. While scout was taking care of business with Mick inside the pub, the team was pausing to charge the array outside. Technically, Barrow Creek was only a 10-minute control stop, but we’d been having some trouble with one battery module dipping to lower voltages than all the rest, so some directed charging for that module was needed. We took about 30 minutes total in Barrow Creek, then hopped back on the road at full speed. A couple hours later, around 12:30 p.m., a wire in the battery pack broke loose, and we had to make an emergency roadside stop. A closer inspection revealed that it was the same problem we encountered yesterday with a loose sense wire. These little wires are connected to every module in the pack, and they are responsible for monitoring the voltages, etc. for each module. As a whole, our pack is only as good as the highest high voltage and the lowest low voltage. If a single module steps outside a certain range, the battery protection system limits the entire pack to keep things safe. With a sense wire knocked loose and the voltage for that module unknown to the battery protection system, it defaulted to safe mode and shut the car off. In order to fix the problem more permanently, Tom and John are performing major battery pack surgery tonight to replace the sense wires and reinforce the connections between battery tabs. Now you may remember I also told you about sealing the battery pack during scrutineering to prevent tampering during the race. Before we changed anything within the pack, we had to check with race officials to make sure we were within the regulations. Officials ruled that fixing these connections and replacing sense wires was acceptable battery work since it did not include replacing or charging any of the battery cells. That’s good news for us since it means we can fix our pack, but it might be a long night for John and Tom. When we weren’t making quick fixes in the battery pack, we were traveling at a reasonable speed down the highway, often running between 95 and 100 kph (around 60 mph). We did pass the Australian team Sunswift early in the day, as we predicted, but they passed us right back about an hour later. Late in the afternoon, we breezed past the Dutch team Twente broken down on the side of the road. At the end of the day, we’re unofficially back in 6th place, having moved up from yesterday’s 7th. The team is still working well together, and our control points and roadside stops are getting more and more efficient. We should pass through two more stops tomorrow, Kulgera for 10 minutes and Coober Pedy for 30. At this rate, we should make it into Adelaide on Friday afternoon. Stay tuned for website updates (check out the new photos!) and for our live broadcast on Principia Internet Radio (every afternoon at 3:30 Central time) to keep up with our progress! Cheers,
Posted on October 26, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Hello, Solar Friends! The generator is humming and the flood lights are streaming across another roadside car park on the Stuart Highway. The nose of the car is jacked up while team members change the tires, check the brakes and the suspension, and make repairs to the fairings. The batteries and the array have been tucked in for the night. Those who aren’t working on the car directly prepare for further racing by cleaning out the vans, seating spare tires, cleaning up from dinner, and finishing staking tents. The Principia Solar Car Team is settled in for another night on the road. We had a successful second day of racing, completing a total of 540 kilometers in 8 hours (racing from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. with two half-hour media stops), an improvement over yesterday’s 530 k in 8.5 hours (racing 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. with one half-our stop). We made it through the Control Points in Dunmarra and Tennant Creek with no trouble, and we’re not far from our next stop: Barrow Creek. Around mid-afternoon, we encountered a common Australian road hazard: a dust storm. This particular cloud of dust was roughly 250 kilometers wide (by race officials’ best estimates) and engulfed our caravan in a heavy dusty haze for much of the trek between Dunmarra and Tennant Creek. There wasn’t much wind, but the dust filled the air and veiled the horizon. It diffused much of the sunlight, and the car barely cast a shadow. When we stopped around 2:00 in the afternoon for a quick roadside mechanical check, we found the array coated with a thick film of grime and had to clean it before continuing down the track. During the dust storm, and for a while after emerging from it, we had to reduce our speed because of the limited amount of energy the array was pulling into the battery pack. But we kept a steady pace throughout the afternoon and into the evening. Near the end of the day, we began noticing some concerning voltages in one module of the battery pack, and we pulled over to have a look under the hood, so to speak. From the telemetry, we knew there was a problem with a sensor that had been knocked loose. Tom and John pulled out the battery pack (Tom still wearing his driving shoes and helmet) and began snipping and soldering. They worked quickly, but our time was running out. When 5:00 rolled around and the car was not yet rolling, we knew we had found our stopping point for the night. We believe the battery problem has been fixed and will need only minimal tinkering in the morning, but we’re remembering also that while Ra 7 has had plenty of race experience, her battery pack, BPS, and telemetry system are all new installments that may still need to be tested and tweaked. But that’s what racing is for! We’re testing this technology for a larger purpose than just winning the race, and we’re participating in this challenge with the goal of glorifying God, not winning. We’re satisfied with the progress we’re making and everything that we’re learning, regardless of how the race ends. As it turns out, we’re not quite holding our position – we’ve slipped in the standings from 6th to 7th – but we’re not far behind our nearest competitors, the Aussie team Sunswift, who are camping just 4 kilometers up the road. Rumor has it, though, that they didn’t overtake us until after 5:00, so we may be able to pass them in the morning before they even get started. (Teams are allowed a 10-minute window after 5:00 to find a suitable place to stop for the night, but they must then start the same number of minutes after 8:00 the next morning.) Tomorrow we’ll hit Barrow Creek for a ten-minute media stop, then Alice Springs, which marks the halfway point. We’re excited to see what other challenges and lessons tomorrow will bring. Thanks to one of our observers from Adelaide, we got another important reminder this morning about who we are as a team and what we’re really working towards. The observer was impressed with the loving interactions and displays of genuine Christian character he found on our team. He told one of our faculty advisors, he’s been away from his church for about a week and a half because of the race, and he came to our team feeling “thirsty,” as he put it. The observer joined us for our Sunday evening church service and again Monday morning as we read the Christian Science Bible Lesson, and he said he left our team feeling refreshed. This sort of evidence proves to us that we are accomplishing our mission, regardless of how the car is running or how well the battery pack is charging. When you think about our team journeying through the Outback, please keep this thought of us in mind: not that we’re trying to beat other teams or fight against the elements to complete a race, but that we’re finding our way into every situation in which our unique character as competitors is needed, useful, and welcome. Thanks for all of your support! Cheers,
Posted on October 25, 2009 at 7:30 pm
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,
Posted on October 24, 2009 at 9:30 am
Hello, Solar Friends! Principia’s Ra 7 is now fully qualified to participate in the World Solar Challenge 2009! We’ll be taking off from Darwin’s State Square at 8:41 a.m. tomorrow on our way to Adelaide. Let me tell you about our day today. The qualifying began at 8:30, and the drivers were all required to attend a meeting with the race officials before that, so the team got started early with breakfast at the track at 6:30. We also began the morning as we always do, by reading the Christian Science Bible Lesson. On busy mornings like these, there’s too much work to be done on the car for everyone to settle down for a half-hour lesson reading. Our solution: we have a smaller delegation of people read each section over our handheld radios for everyone in the pit to hear as they complete their work on the car. Around 10 a.m., we were ready to take the track with Tom Brownell behind the wheel. We had watched several teams qualify already, and we knew the routine. Each team was allowed a single warm-up lap around the track and a running start for their timed lap. After the timed lap, cars looped around to a slalom course set up in the middle of the track loop, followed directly by a braking test. Those three components – the timed lap, the slalom test, and the braking test – comprised the entire dynamic scrutineering and qualifier. After our warm-up lap, Tom drove a qualifying lap around the 3-kilometer track in a time of 2 minutes and 35 seconds, averaging about 72 kph or 46 miles per hour. To give you some perspective, the slower teams were taking up to 4 minutes to complete a lap, and the fastest lap, from Aurora (a world-renowned Australian team), took only 1 minute and 53 seconds. We’re pretty satisfied with this lap time because it was only milliseconds away from our fastest practice lap yesterday. After just a single warm-up lap, that consistency is impressive! In the grand scheme of things, our lap time earned us the 12th starting position tomorrow morning out of 32 qualified cars so far. Unlike most other cars, Ra 7 did not move directly from the qualifying lap to the slalom test, for there was another team ahead of us, Helios from France, that had broken down during the brake test and needed to be cleared from the track. The wait was only a small bother to our team (we can imagine how hot Tom was feeling inside our black car in the Australian sun!), but this incident and others like it have made us even more aware of the need to realize the source of protection for every team we race with, not just ourselves. Race officials announced that this race has seen more accidents, problems, and delays than any other, and so we’d like your help in clinging steadfastly to the idea that God is the strength, protection, and power of everyone who lifts a wrench and every car that hits the track. When it was our turn to navigate the slalom test, Tom and Ra 7 completed it with ease then came to a quick, smooth stop with room to spare in the braking test. And just like that, our team had officially qualified for the race. When the car returned to the pit, we quickly loaded it into the crate to take Ra 7 out for a spin on public roads. Justin Sinichko and Peter Chaney both took turns in the car, testing out their speed and getting a feeling for the car’s altered steering and position in the lane. In order to gather efficiency data, they each also practiced holding specific speeds called out to them by the chase vehicle – 10 mph, 20 mph, 30 mph, and on up. That data, collected by Matthew Piatt and the telemetry system, will help us to make wise decisions about how to drive the car in varying power conditions such as weather and terrain. In all, we tested for roughly two hours and put another 104 km on the car. Tonight, the team is busy making a few final alterations to the car. In particular, we’re replacing the wheel hubs, brake rotors, and brake calipers; tweaking the telemetry and a few electrical parts; and modifying the fairings slightly to keep the windows closed when driving at high speeds. We’ll also spend a good portion of the evening packing the crate and our own personal luggage. We’ll be sad to leave Darwin, our home for the past few weeks, but the open road is calling. Tomorrow morning will be another early start to ensure that we’re all packed and prepared to take off at 8:41. We won’t be hosting a live radio show tomorrow morning, but you can still listen in for quick updates at the top of the hour on Principia Internet Radio. We’ll be back on the air on Monday morning (3:30 p.m. Sunday afternoon in the Midwest) to share with you our progress during our first day of racing. Cheers, Karen
Posted on October 23, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Hello, Solar Friends! Just before 3:00 this afternoon, we heard the sweet sound that makes every solar racer smile, the soft click of our motor, as Justin Sinichko gently accelerated out of the pit to take the track. After a morning of battery charging and telemetry testing (not to mention re-packing the crate), we spent about three and a half hours this afternoon giving our drivers some practice on the track at Hidden Valley. Since we passed static scrutineering yesterday, we had a full day of testing before tomorrow’s dynamic scrutineering and qualifier. Dynamic scrutineering for this race consists of a slalom test and a brake test, and the qualifier itself is just two additional laps around the track, one to warm up and then one timed lap. The team with the fastest lap time will be the first to leave the starting line on Sunday, so much of our driving today was aimed at learning the curves of the track and practicing maintaining a safe and swift speed. As I said, Justin drove first, then Peter Chaney and Katie Farquhar each drove a few laps. Justin took another turn in the car, and then Tom Brownell finished out the day. Ra 7 was out on the track for a total of three hours and 20 minutes and traveled about 112 kilometers. And she was performing beautifully for all four of our drivers. At one point, Joe Ritter tells me, the chase van following the solar car around the track had to speed up to 110 kph in order to catch up with our speeding car, whose tight turning radius and smooth handling left our rented 12-passenger van in the dust. At the end of the day, lap times determined that Tom will be our driver to qualify the car tomorrow and vie for the best pole position. As the car returned to the pit just before 6:30 p.m., it slowed to a brief stop at the top of the pit lane. A crowd had gathered at the rail to watch our car zip by, and John Broere passed a few info cards out the passenger side window. As the car continued slowly down the pit lane, other team members and visitors rushed up to our chase vehicle to collect more info cards. Everyone was interested in our car and excited to read more about her specifications. If you haven’t seen for yourself just how eye-catching our car is, check out our Ra 7 photo gallery. She’s a beauty! Around midday today, the last couple members of our team finally joined us in Darwin: Bob and Debbie Brownell (Tom’s parents), who will be driving the scout vehicle and keeping the team fed during the race. In the scramble and excitement of Thursday’s scrutineering success, I also forgot to announce the arrival of Ken Pratt, another solar car parent (though his son Kevin has long since graduated) and the driver of our truck and trailer. We’re fortunate to have dedicated parents like Ken and the Brownells to help us meet our goals and keep the team functioning. Plus, they’re a lot of fun to have around! After such a successful day of driving, all 21 of us piled into a Chinese restaurant on the main drag in Darwin for a family-style meal and a rousing round of karaoke. Mark Evans and Ross Vincent started us off with the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun,” and the fun (and noise level) only escalated from there. Pictures of this and the other events of the day are posted in the photo album Testing. We’re all tucking into bed with high spirits and full bellies, ready to take on the track – for dynamic scrutineering and qualifying – again tomorrow. I’ll let you know how it goes! Cheers, Karen P.S. My guest on the next live radio show will be Sten Palmer, our “token Aussie,” who’s going to give us a few lessons in how to speak Australian. Tune in to Principia Internet Radio at 3:30 p.m. Central time on Friday afternoon!
Posted on October 22, 2009 at 3:14 pm
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
Posted on October 21, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Hello, Solar Friends! Yesterday, the team took a well-deserved day off to explore the caves and rocky outcrops of Injalak, a traditional Aboriginal site. Our guide, Gary, showed us thousand-year-old rock paintings, told us story after story from Aboriginal beliefs and history, led us around the rock to the most breathtaking outlooks on his “paradise home,” and demonstrated the use of some of his own hand-made tools. We all enjoyed the hike and the history. (The trek across a crocodile-infested river in the van on the way to Injalak was a thrill, too!) Today, we headed back to the shop to finish preparing for tomorrow’s early morning scrutineering appointment. We tackled a few big jobs. It took a team of several to clean and reinforce the shipping crate – after the mold and the shelf collapse – so that we can transport our car to the building where scrutineering is held. We also spent a good amount of time redesigning and modifying the lid to the battery box. Since the WSC regulations allow only 25 kg of Lithium polymer batteries, compared to NASC’s 30 kg, the whole pack was reconfigured, and the lid needed to be raised about a quarter of an inch for everything to fit. Speaking of the batteries, they are the last piece of this puzzle that has finally come together. (Yes, Tom, John, and Matthew finally left the air conditioning and joined us in the shop.) With the battery pack assembled and installed in the car, the motor spun on its own for the first time in Australia around 9:30 tonight. That’s more than 10 hours before our scrutineering time – a better record than last summer in NASC! Our last task before leaving the shop tonight was to load the car into our newly refurbished crate, ready to meet the technical standards of scrutineering. For more details on scrutineering, listen in to Principia Internet Radio on Wednesday and Thursday at 3:30 p.m. Central time. We’ll give you a rundown beforehand of what we expect and a report of our successes afterwards. That’s www.principia.edu/radio. While working in the pit today, we were able to interact with the other teams some more in a spirit that our team has dubbed “coopetition,” or a cooperative sense of competition. Members of our team chatted for hours with students from MIT, Nuon, and Sunswift, among others, and we traded spare parts and advice with both Aurora and Stanford. (For more information on these teams and other participants, check out the Competitors page.) One of the parts that Stanford requested was a resistor not much larger than the head of a pin. It may literally have been the smallest favor we’ve ever done for another team, but it sure was important, both for its use in Stanford’s car and for the relationship we’re building with our fellow racers. The other night, I highlighted the electrical guys as one easily over-looked portion of our team; tonight I’d like to tell you about our errand-runners, a.k.a. the logistics team. All the while we’re getting work done in the shop, Joe, Steve, Katie Farquhar, and Megan Brown are scrambling around an unfamiliar town, looking for the crazy things we request – super glue, a sewing kit, Exacto knives, drill bits, and of course, cold drinks. All of these things seem to be more difficult for us to find in Australia than they would be in the U.S., and our tireless logistics crew has gotten pretty familiar with the Darwin/Palmerston area. The work we accomplish in the shop wouldn’t be possible without their supplying our every need, so we’re supremely grateful for their spirit of adventure, discovery, and selfless devotion to the team. The final exciting news for the day is to announce that we’ve added another person to the team traveling to Adelaide. Sten Palmer, a solar car alum who has come to Darwin to help out for a few days, has agreed to drive the Media van during the race! Sten was born here in Darwin, graduated from Principia in 2008, and now works in train control and as a volunteer firefighter in Port Headland, Western Australia. She’s a perfect choice for driving the Media van because of her experience with the team and some of her firefighter qualification courses in on-road driving, off-road driving, and road crash rescue, among others. We also joke that Sten is our “token Aussie” and that she’s an asset to the team because she’s used to driving on the left. Seriously, we’re grateful to have her help not just this week but during the race, as well. That’s all I have to report for now. I’ve drafted this email on a yellow legal pad here in the shop to keep you up to date with everything going on here. (How many people can say they hand-write their email?) Stay tuned for the results of our scrutineering tomorrow evening, and in the meantime, explore the website – there are photos related to today in the photo album Preparing for Scrutineering! Cheers, Karen P.S. One last bit of good news. I told you Brian Kamusinga had a bit of extra traveling to do to secure a return visa for the U.S. – mission accomplished.
Posted on October 19, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Hello, Solar Friends! Our team here in Darwin has more than doubled since the last update! On Sunday, our documentary team, Nick and John from Nick Mollé Productions, arrived and began following us closely, camera in hand. The rest of our student team arrived today (Monday): Seniors Mark Evans, Katie Farquhar, and Justin Sinichko; Junior Brian Kamusinga; and Sophomores Megan Brown, Kendall McMurray, and Ross Vincent. They came in around noon, but most of their luggage won’t make it until 9:00 tonight, unfortunately. After more than 24 hours of traveling, this resilient team came directly to the shop and jumped into the work. We’re grateful to have their help and happy that the whole team is together again. Brian’s journey isn’t over yet, though. As a Kenyan citizen, Brian has a complicated process of visa applications to complete so that he can re-enter the U.S. after the race. Around midnight tonight, Brian will turn around and get back on a plane to Melbourne, one of the few cities in Australia with a U.S. Embassy, where he can accomplish that application process. Then he’ll fly back to Darwin to rejoin the team on Tuesday. Whew! The last addition to our team is recent alum Sten Palmer, an Australia native, who flew into Darwin today to work with the team for a few days. As a student, Sten was a dedicated solar car team member, and she has been a valuable contact in country in organizing many details for this race. Work in the shop has continued as expected. Most of the mechanical maintenance has been completed, and the body work is progressing quickly. We have also finished repairing the array after the crate shelf collapse crushed a few of our fragile solar cells in shipping. We were able to peel off the two broken cell modules and replace them with spares in no time at all. We didn’t have the right wire to connect the new modules into the array, but we traded a handful of zip ties to a Canadian team who needed them, in exchange for the lengths of wire we needed to finish the array. Now, you can’t even tell we made a change! But to see pictures of the whole process, check out our new photo album, Getting Ra 7 Ready. After long hot days in the shop, we like to joke about Tom, Matthew, and John spending their days relaxing by the pool and in the air conditioned apartments (and some of the officials at the track have joined us in teasing “those electrical guys” about their mysterious work away from the shop), but these guys have been working around the clock to get our batteries ready to race. Most of their effort has gone into perfecting the Battery Management System, particularly its interface with the telemetry system. All of this electrical jargon is pretty puzzling even to long-time team members, so I asked Matthew Piatt to explain it for me in the simplest of terms. Here’s how he broke it down. During the race, the strategy team in the chase vehicle processes data received from the car’s telemetry system, and other external factors like the weather and the terrain, to determine the car’s optimal speed to drive as far and fast as possible using as little energy as possible. The telemetry data they use informs them about the motor controller, various physical forces acting on the car, GPS data, and, most importantly, the batteries. The battery pack is monitored by a Battery Protection System (BPS), which shuts off the car when the batteries reach dangerous levels of charge or temperature, for example. The telemetry system monitors those same aspects of the battery pack (and more) and relays that information to the driver and to the chase vehicle. The Battery Management System resides between the BPS and the telemetry system. After the BPS determines that the battery pack is safe, the BMS uses telemetry information to make decisions automatically about how to optimize battery performance on the road – decisions that used to be made manually by the strategy team in chase only when the car was off. We might make fun of these guys for taking it easy in the air con (as the Aussies call it), but they’re creating one of the most important and technologically advanced systems on our car. So they deserve a dip in the pool. They got that break tonight as we all relaxed around the pool in our apartment complex and chowed down on noodles and prawn crackers. We’re all feeling cheerful and rejuvenated to have the team together again, and our excitement about the race is mounting. Tomorrow we’ve scheduled a day off to sample the local Aboriginal culture at Injalak and spend more time together as a team outside the workshop. I’ll keep you updated as we get back into the shop on Wednesday and prepare for scrutineering. And don’t forget that our first radio show is coming up soon! It will be Wednesday morning here in Darwin, but you can listen live on Tuesday afternoon, October 20, at 3:30 p.m. Central Time. Tune in to Principia Internet Radio at www.principia.edu/radio. Cheers, Karen
Posted on October 17, 2009 at 1:01 am
Hello, Solar Friends! We’ve fallen into a productive routine here in Darwin: Tom stays home to work on the BMS while David, Peter, and I spend the whole day at the shop. Joe and Steve motor around town running errands and taking care of the logistics, and John floats between the BMS and the shop, helping out wherever he’s needed. So far in the shop, we’ve made significant progress on sealing the gaps between the fairings and the lower body of the car, aligning the brake calipers, and putting the finishing touches on our adjustable array stand. The Battery Protection System, a key portion of the whole Battery Management System, has been assembled and tested. To complete the BMS, Tom will need parts and expertise that Matthew Piatt will bring with him when he arrives in Australia tomorrow afternoon. Matthew’s arrival will trigger a change in our routine, and by Monday evening we will have the whole team here in Darwin and the car fully assembled (we hope!) – bringing together all of the individual projects we’ve been working on this week. But our time here isn’t all work and no play. On Thursday night, we chose to dine at a street festival in Mindil Beach, where we found kangaroo and emu sausages at the Road Kill Café, barbecued octopus, and mango smoothies. Mindil Beach also offered us live music, a fire dance, and booth after booth of Australian souvenirs from Aboriginal art to crocodile-foot back scratchers. Tonight, the Hidden Valley Motor Sports Complex, our current shop-away-from-home and the host of the WSC qualifier, kicks off its mud racing season, and the team plans to take the evening off to attend. (More than a few of us are disappointed we won’t be able to participate!) We’ve also been taking time out from the work to talk with visitors to the track and other teams who have set up shop near us at Hidden Valley. So far, we’ve chatted with solar racers from Japan, France, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and Australia. More teams should arrive at the beginning of next week to prepare for scrutineering on Wednesday. Check out the Competitors page for a complete list. We also met the third-fastest adolescent motorcyclist in Australia when he came with his dad to practice on the track! We certainly haven’t been bored. Perhaps the most striking impression I’ve gotten from talking with the other teams is how fortunate we were to have made it through customs and quarantine so quickly. Thanks to our connections in the shipping industry, we were able to retrieve the crate from Adelaide and proceed to Darwin (and to real shop work) on schedule. Many of the other racers we’ve talked with are still waiting for their cars to clear quarantine for one strange reason or another. One team reports their car is being held for further inspection because of dust in their tool boxes! This perspective helps me to recognize what a blessing it was only to have to clean up a little mold. We have our car with us, in one piece, and we have enough time to prepare it for the race. In the same vein, we recently received an email from our friends at the Missouri University of Science and Technology (MUST, formerly Rolla) saying they had stopped participating in WSC because of the cost and dangers of shipping their car, among other reasons. That email ended with a supportive message: “We no longer participate in this race. … So, guess who we are cheering for in the upcoming World Solar Challenge. Go Principia!” One final important announcement before I sign off: the time for our radio broadcasts during the race has changed. Instead of 2:30 p.m., the live show on Principia Internet Radio will occur at 3:30 p.m. Central Time. The dates are still the same, Tuesday, October 20 through Thursday, October 29, and you can still download the podcasts after the fact if you miss the show, but if you’re interested in listening live and calling in, mark it on your calendars: 3:30 p.m. Central Time! Cheers, Karen
Posted on October 15, 2009 at 3:35 am
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, P.S. The pictures that we have posted so far are in the photo album Moving and Unpacking the Crate.
Posted on October 11, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Hello, solar friends! I believe you’ve had a recent update about our arrival in Australia – I haven’t had Internet access myself to check! Joe Ritter, Steve Shedd, and I have been traveling for the past four days through the Outback, up the Stuart Highway (“the track”). We flew into Adelaide on Thursday, rented a truck and picked up the crate from the port, and began the 3,000 km trek to Darwin. We’re essentially traveling the race route in reverse, logging latitude and longitude data for control points and taking notes about road conditions and tricky turns. We’ve traveled through Adelaide, Coober Pedy, Alice Springs, and we’re stopped now at Tennant Creek. We expect to arrive in Darwin with the car on Tuesday, where John Broere, Tom Brownell, Peter Chaney, and David Crabill will meet us. The car and crate are in good condition, and we’ve already gotten a jump on acquiring other necessities for the trip like a Nitrogen tank for filling tires and a CB radio for the truck. We’ve also been handing out more info cards than I can count as we travel. Every place we stop, someone notices our t-shirts or asks what’s in the box, and most of them have heard of solar racing and the World Solar Challenge. I think they like seeing a picture of the team, meeting a representative, and feeling like they have someone to cheer for. We also enjoy meeting curious and enthusiastic fans and spreading the news about solar cars and Principia. Overall, it’s been a fun and fulfilling trip, and Joe, Steve, and I all look forward to the blessings and adventures still to come. We’ll keep you updated! Cheers, Karen Davis Media Relations
Posted on October 9, 2009 at 11:47 am
Hello All!
Posted on September 23, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Hello Solar Friends! After a long summer of finishing touches, organizing tools, and packing bin after bin, the team is finally able to take a breather: the crate has been shipped! You can see a great slideshow of the crate building process by clicking here. In fact, Ra 7 is currently aboard the freight ship the Cap Palmerston, floating just off the shore of Sydney, Australia. She began her journey with a truck ride from Elsah to St. Louis, then boarded a train on August 25th to travel to the West Coast. In Long Beach, California, our crate was loaded onto the Cap Palmerston, which then set sail on September 3rd and is scheduled to dock in Adelaide on September 29th. The battery box and its 25kg pack of Lithium-polymer batteries are also en route to Adelaide. It took some finagling to get this shipment of hazardous material onto a plane and out of the country on schedule, but our shipping contact, Leroy Pettyjohn, made it happen. The batteries have now made it all the way to Sydney, and once they make it through customs, they will travel to Adelaide via truck for the team to retrieve in early October. Back on campus, team members are working ahead in their schoolwork in preparation for their own departure to Australia. The first group leaves in just two weeks to pick up the car, the batteries, and a rented truck to drive everything up to the starting line in Darwin. But before any of us leave campus, we have the privilege of starring in the first edition of a new Principia Internet Radio program called Tech-Zone, hosted by Rick Dearborn on Thursday nights. Go to www.prin.edu/radio to listen in for technical details and explanations about Ra 7. You can even email or call in questions during our live broadcast (8:00-9:00 p.m. Central) at 618-374-4200 or talk.radio@principia.edu. So join us tomorrow, Thursday, September 24, at 8:00 p.m. Central, for PIR’s newest live talk show, Tech-Zone. And send your love and prayers to the shores of Australia, where Ra 7 awaits! Cheers,
Posted on February 2, 2009 at 2:29 am
Unfortunately, due to financial restraints, it is almost never practical to take our whole team when we go to a race. For domestic races we usually take significantly more than we need since the costs are less and we can give more students a chance to be a part of a race team, but for international races we are forced to pair-down and find a balance between how many students we can afford to take and how many students we need to safely race the car. For the 2009 World Solar Challenge, we have chosen nine students for the race team, who will be accompanied by four advisers and two parents. As it currently stands, the following people will travel to Australia with Ra 7: students Katie Farquhar, Peter Chaney, Megan Brown, David Crabill, Kendall McMurray, Brian Kamusinga, Tom Brownell, Mark Evans, and Barnard Ross Vincent; advisers Joe Ritter, Steve Shedd, John Broere, and Karen Davis; Ken and Kathy Pratt driving the truck; and Bob and Debbie Brownell providing our scout vehicle. We are very grateful for the work that these people, as well as the rest of the team, have done to support Ra 7 and look forward to their continued support. In other news, we made a prototype of a design to open and close the fairing windows, removed the lower body from the chassis of the car, and removed the steering column. We are working on redesigning and replacing the steering column, u-joints, steering rods, and associated hardware in an attempt to improve the system and tighten up the steering. This also gave us a good opportunity to fix some broken wires coming off of the 19-pin connector located inside the quick-release on the end of the steering column that connects the electronics inside of the removable steering wheel to the rest of the car.
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