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Thirty minutes is not a lot of time. The Sunswift time spent about 35 minutes in the Katherine media stop - 30 minutes for the mandatory control and media plus about 5 extra minutes to fix a small bug in the car. Queen's took advantage and slipped out of the media stop ahead of us...
The rest of us scrambled for fuel - jerry cans to fill the primary support vehicles (the chase and lead cars) and a trip to the petrol station for the trailers. By the time we returned to the media station, the solar car was already underway. The support crew scrambled to get to the vehicles...
As we left the media stop, the vehicle placings were roughly: M-Pulse (Michigan Uni), Nuna (Delft Uni), Aurora 101, SoMo (Solar Motions), Solar Miner III (Uni Missouri-Rolla), Sunswift (UNSW), Mirage (Queen's Uni), White Dolphin (Tamagawa Uni).
Thomas Toth was driving on the leg into Katherine and he ended up in The Toolbox. He had a hundred things to say about driving the solar car.
"Sweat was running down everywhere and some drops were hanging from my eyebrows. Every now and then it would fall in my eyes. Wiping your eye means letting go of the handle bars - a tricky proposition. There were about 10 flies inside the car when I got inside and they kept buzzing around and landing on my sunnies (sunglasses) right in my view. After a while, luckily, the flies settled onto the inside of the car, exhausted. Amazingly, the 250 kg car doesn't even feel the passing 120 metric ton road trains. Whereas a normal car would swerve, it's as if there isn't even a breeze on the solar car. The array is pretty hot in the sun, so when my toes touched the plastic underside, it was startling."
1:02pm - Shortly after leaving the Katherine media stop, we caught back up to Queen's Uni's car Mirage and over took them in a perfectly executed manoeuvre by Karen Sharpe.
1:48pm - We passed through Mataranka. The weather is holding nicely - we're driving in full sun about 98% of the time. There are some high clouds and very little wind.
2:23pm - We passed through Larrimah. The weather is becoming more cloudy.
3:30pm - A worn rear tyre caused us to stop for 15 minutes while a new rim and tyre were installed (see above photo).
4:10pm - Maximum power point tracker problems grounded us for the day.
Willy The Whale
Willy!
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