Day Five: Back to Civilization
Principia Solar Car Team
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Hello, Solar
Friends!
On our second to last day of racing, the team awoke
to a sunrise only the Australian Outback could afford. To one
horizon, the setting moon and dark starry sky were being chased away
by the beginning of another day. In our beds (an assortment of
Wal-Mart sleeping bags), we lay gazing at the two-toned sky through
the roofs of our tents and a film of buzzing flies awaiting our
inevitable exit. The traffic on the Stuart Highway was beginning to
pick up again with the coming of the dawn, and we could hear our
teammates stirring in the tents around us. These were the morning
sights and sounds we’d gotten used to in the past few days, and
this was our last morning to experience them in the Outback. We knew
that by the end of the day we’d have reached civilization again. It
was a bittersweet morning.
With the team loaded up in the vans
and ready to embark, the car’s treaded Dunlop tires gripped the
warm pavement. The phrase “solar is rolling” echoed across
the channel one radio frequency, and we were off the line, starting
right on time at 8:00 a.m.
Ra 7 got moving at a pretty good
clip right off the bat with a well-charged battery pack and Tom
Brownell behind the wheel. In no time at all, we’d made it to our
control point in Glendambo. As we were charging in the parking lot,
team Aurora pulled in, just about 15 minutes behind us. We left the
control point with Justin Sinichko in the car and high hopes for the
midday sun. The following drive between Glendambo and Port Augusta
was hilly and scenic, and we passed a whole family of emus by the
side of the road! We were making great time, and the car was
performing the best it has yet.
As we pulled into the town of
Port Augusta just after 2:00 p.m., we hit some traffic and a few red
lights – obstacles we’ve been fortunate not to see much of during
this race. At one red light in town, the solar car had stopped on the
line and could not get going again when the light turned green. “The
accelerator pedal just isn’t working,” Justin radioed back to us.
In moments, our head safety officer Mark Evans and car leader Peter
Chaney were out of the van and at Ra 7’s sides to push her safely
out of the intersection.
Ra 7 rolled toward the side of the
road and out of harm’s way, but it seemed the problems did not stop
with the accelerator. The brake pedal had also gotten jammed, and
Justin was unable to stop the car once it was rolling. Ra 7 coasted
along the curb for a few feet, then came to a jostling halt against
the bumper of the lead vehicle. With the safety crew flagging traffic
and a team on the ground removing the upper body in a flash, we
quickly saw that Justin was entirely unharmed, and the car itself
suffered only the tiniest damage in the carbon fiber shell of the
lower body.
With those assurances, the team focused on
discovering and solving the problem that had caused these mishaps in
the first place. The braking issue required only an easy mechanical
fix in the pedal, and the car immediately resumed braking safely and
completely, as it should. After examining the accelerator pedal, we
determined it was not a mechanical problem that had robbed Ra 7 of
her acceleration. Our next guess was the motor controller. After
replacing the motor controller with one that we borrowed from our
racing friends at Rolla, we learned that this also was not the source
of the breakdown. It seemed the motor itself was the culprit, and we
radioed to Ken Pratt, who drives our truck and trailer, for him to
bring us our spare motor.
While waiting for the truck to
arrive, we decided to move the car to a safer location than the side
of the road since we’d be doing some major repairs. (Our motor is
mounted to our single, foam-filled rear wheel, so putting in a new
motor meant a difficult tire change around the rear suspension along
with completely reinstalling the motor itself.) We happened to have
stopped right in front of a residential driveway, and the homeowners
had come out to the fence to see what the commotion was about. We
didn’t even have to ask twice for these kind strangers to offer us
the use of their driveway to complete our repairs away from the
traffic. Their hospitality didn’t end there, though. As we worked,
the family brought out jugs of ice cold water for us – a welcome
relief from the heat.
We believe now that the motor failure
was caused by overheating due to excessive use of the regenerative
braking feature – a much less concerning reason than many we could
have imagined! Once the truck arrived with the spare, the repair went
smoothly and quickly, considering its complexity. It took the team
less than half an hour to replace the motor and the rear tire, a time
that would be impressive even under the best of conditions.
Altogether, we were stopped on the side of the road for just under an
hour before we could finish the last three kilometers to the control
point at Port Augusta.
While we were stopped, team Aurora went
cruising past us, and by the time we reached the check point, they
were already on their way down the track again. It looks like we
won’t be beating them this time, but we’re pretty satisfied that
we were able to hold them at bay for so long this morning!
The
30-minute media stop in Port Augusta seemed relaxed and uneventful
after the motor change stop, and by 3:40 p.m. we were back on the
road. The battery pack had had plenty of time to charge up during all
the stops, and Justin was ready to get the car back up to speed and
make up some lost time.
The closer we got to Adelaide, the
more natural features we’d been missing reappeared: bodies of
water, trees, mountains, and even clouds. There was a little too much
cloud cover in the late afternoon for solar racing at full speed, but
by the end of the day we had logged another 572 km and gotten within
180 km of the official end of the race.
At the end of the day,
our 10-minute window of searching for the right place to stop for the
night led us to an open field of straw with a gravel drive just off
the highway. We pulled off into the dirt and set up the array stand,
facing the setting sun. Soon the landowner came out to investigate,
and he assured us that we were welcome to use that bit of his
farmland to charge out batteries and work on the car until sunset.
Our scout had found a campground farther down the road for our
nighttime accommodations, but the farmer invited us back to his field
for our morning charging and final preparations. It was our second
run-in with selfless kindness from people we didn’t even know in
just a few hours, and we were grateful to see this proof that our
needs have already been met with love.
We finished off the
night with a hearty steak dinner at a local pub and a bittersweet
sendoff to our media van driver (recently re-dubbed “Hollywood”)
Sten Palmer, who had to return to her job in Port Headland. The team
bedded down early with the car tucked into the crate to get a good
night’s sleep before our final day.
The plan for tomorrow is
to really push the limits on our car to make it to the official end
of timing with our battery pack almost completely drained. Once our
time has stopped ticking and the race is officially finished, we will
pause to charge up again and then wend our way into town to cross the
ceremonial finish line in Adelaide around noon. As far as we know, we
are currently in 7th place, and with team Twente about an hour behind
us and team Aurora about an hour ahead of us, we don’t expect that
to change.
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s update about our last
day of racing and then a final report on Saturday after the awards
ceremony. And be sure to catch our last couple of radio shows, too.
We’ll be broadcasting live on Princpia Internet Radio
(www.principia.edu/radio)
at 3:30 p.m. Central time on Thursday and Friday.
As always,
thanks for your ongoing support. We’re almost
there!
Cheers,
Karen
P.S. My apologies for the late
posting of this update. I told you the team bedded down early, and
that included the keys to the vans – aka my access to our BGAN unit
from CapRock, which gives us satellite internet. So it had to wait
until the morning!
Principia College Solar Car Team
618.374.5290
www.principia.edu/solar