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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