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The past three days have been full on and hectic. Scrutineering was held on Thursday and Friday - all the solar cars, and a few demonstration electric vehicles, were closely examined by a team of 20 or so experts and officials. The solar cars were weighed and photographed, and then examined by the NT roads and traffic authority for road worthiness. After that, the electrical worthiness of the car was scrutinised, followed by battery weigh-in. The battery storage is limited by weight such all teams, even though they might have different types of batteries, have approximately the same energy storage capacity in their battery. UNSW Sunswift II, like most cars, passed with flying colours.
On Saturday, we ran the time trial sprint and steering and braking tests. Karen Sharpe drove the car for the tests and no difficulties. She clocked in at 94.9km/h in the time trial sprint, but the speed might have been higher if it wasn't for a small mis-communication on the radio (it was a bit of static) that caused her to let off the throttle a bit early. The speed earned us 10th place on the grid.
This morning, the race began with no problems. Only a small UNSW crew and two cars lined up on the Darwin Esplanade for the 8:00 am start. Most of the rest of us in the support vehicles waited in anticipation - about 40km south of Darwin to meet up with the solar car - for the first radio reports from the car. Michigan passed the the first at about 8:40am, followed closely by Aurora. We could hardly believe it when UNSW Sunswift II came in close behind Aurora - there was much hooting and cheering by support crew.
9:35am - We passed through Adelaide River. At that time, the order of the solar cars (according to visual contact) was M-Pulse (University of Michigan), Aurora, Sunswift, Solar Motions and Nuon (Delft University).
9:53am - Solar Motions overtook Sunswift shortly after Adelaide River, and Nuon over took the fleet and solar car about 20 minutes later, when a very-slow moving camper van caused a bit of congestion on the road.
10:25am - The car is looking good from our perspective (that is, from "The Toolbox", one of the trailers). We're maintaining greater than about 80km/h fairly consistently. The sky is mostly sunny but a bit hazy - an occasional cloud covers the road. UNSW Sunswift II is still in fifth place, however, the ordering at the front of the pack is a bit unclear. We have little visual contact with any teams behind us...
10:53am - Toolbox stopped to change drivers and we sighted University of Missouri-Rolla. They are currently about 5 minutes behind UNSW Sunswift II.
11:10am - We stopped to change drivers - Eddy had to take short holiday to a nearby tree... We were overtaken by Missouri-Rolla.
11:59am - We arrived in Katherine. The car order is M-Pulse, Nuon, Aurora, Solar Motions, Uni Missouri-Rolla, UNSW Sunswift II, Queen's University. No other cars have arrived as of this writing. The next media stop is Dunmurra - see you there.
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. | | | |
