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Day 8 seemed to start as quickly as day 7 ended, however this morning it was slightly easier to get up. We arrived at the start line just in time for the sunrise, which would give us the greatest amount of time to reach full charge on the batteries. The other 3 solar car teams were also there, with the same idea. By the time 10 o'clock rolled around all teams had a full charge. This levelled out the playing field again, however no team this year attempted the Silver 100. The Silver 100 is a stretch of road 100km long between Broken Hill and Mildura in which teams try to set a record for the average speed over it; the current record is held by Northern Territory University with 107.6km/h.
The race for the most part progressed without incident, however UNSW Sunswift II made a courtesy stop part way through the first half to allow traffic to pass by. The race then continued onwards. In the mean time a few of the team, including your reporter, stayed behind in Broken Hill to make some repairs to our trailer. It took us an hour to find somewhere which stocked the replacement sway bars we needed, but finally McLauchlan Motor & Engineering in Broken Hill did more than we could have asked for. Not only did they install the new ones for free they also removed the old ones for nothing. We made it back on the road by midday and started making our way towards Mildura. On the way we stopped off at the first check point to find a German 4WD tour going through on the same route. After both parties attempted a conversation, we left it and went on our own ways. However some of us left a little confused...
| Race Results: | Time taken | Average Speed | | Aurora | 3 hr 00 min 57 sec | 96.00 km/h | | UNSW Sunswift II | 3 hr 05 min 27 sec | 93.07 km/h | | Spirit of Canberra | 3 hr 27 min 09 sec | 83.07 km/h | | Ned | 4 hr 16 min 49 sec | 67.60 km/h | | Zoom Eagle | 4 hr 54 min 16 sec | 59.00 km/h |
Willy The Whale
Willy!
Mail Bag
If you have a question for the team, or would like to wish them well, write to our mail bag, care of Ask Willy. | | | |
