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The 2001 UNSW Solar Racing Team (SRT) is in the midst of their final week of preparation for Monday's departure for Darwin. After a successful weekend at "Camp Wagga", the team members buckled down for the final week of the spring session at the University of New South Wales. Most of the crew has a full plate of assignments, tutorials and lectures to wrap up before departing. Many are grateful to their lecturers, who've been more than understanding and have made special considerations to help the team members manage their work load.
The highlight of Camp Wagga was seeing the car on the road again for the first time in more than a year. The last time the wheels felt the road was on the "Eastern Distributer Crossing" trip - when the UNSW Sunswift II was the first electric vehicle to cross Sydney's new intra-city express tunnel. That trip was great fun, and attracted considerable attention from Sydney's print and news media,including helicoptor coverage from the local news broadcasters.
Work carried on into the early sunday evening to get the car ready for on-road testing. One of the last major projects is the wheel spats and fillets. The spats will cover the wheels with a shell to reduce aerodynamic drag, while the fillets - curved fittings that join the spat to the car's underbelly - help to reduce interference drag at the spat-to-car intersection. New spat and fillet moulds took all weekend to make. Those moulds are now being used to lay up the carbon-fibre composite spats and fillets.
| Adam Karkowski puts the finishing touches on the wheel spat fillet mould. |
By the time night fell on the last day of "Camp Wagga", the car was finally ready for some on-road testing. Two torches (a.k.a. flashlights) were cable-tied to the front of the chassis, and the car was rolled out onto the short drive up to our workshop. As planned, the car worked beautifully, well, with one minor exception. The regenerative braking was somehow connected up backwards and functioned as regenerative acceleration. No worries, however, the problem was quickly rectified.
| We were getting a bit punchy by the end of the weekend. Ice cream buckets suddenly became the fashionable head gear... |
Part of the team's preparation includes risk management. Besides compiling all of the necessary paperwork (emergency contact details for the team members, MSDS sheets for all materials used to repair the car on road, Risk Assessment/Mitigation documentation, etc.) several members of the team partook in a full-day first aid course delivered by professional trainers. Thus, at least one first-aid trained student will be each vehicle during the journey around the continent.
| Some team members spent a whole day in the Key Centre for Photovoltaic Engineering's teaching laboratory in an advanced first-aid course as part of the preparations for the race. |
Also of note, three team members (Sammy, Jamie and Karen) went to the Sydney studios of Triple J, Australia's hippest national radio broadcaster, for an interview with Jim Trail. Stay tuned to JJJ on the Saturday morning before the race (we'll post the details when they're known) to hear the interview.
Willy The Whale
Willy!
Monsieur Le Dremmel, from Wilmington, Delaware USA, wrote us with the following question for the team: "How fast does the car go on a good sunny day?"
To which Ed Pink (Array team) replies: "The car has reached up to 120 km/hr (that's about 72 mph), using energy from both the array and the battery. We'll probably be racing at more like 60-80 km/hr to conserve energy in the battery, however. Our car is fully optimised to conserve energy--the power needed to run the car at 100 km/hr is about one hundred times less than that of a full-sized 4x4."
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. | | | |
