A Great Australian Adventure (Part 6)

Day 4 began quite well.

I took the first stint in the car. The weather wasn't great; there was sun, but also a lot of cloud cover. Despite this, Endeavour chugged along the Stuart Highway at a steady speed of around 50 to 55 km/h. This stint was somewhat different to the first one I drove. For starters, a rather startled insect of some sort had made the car it's home in the night and was now flapping around in the driver cabin, no doubt rather perplexed by the situation it had found itself in. Also, Endeavour began to experience strange power losses, where I would lose drive for four or five seconds before it would come in again. Sometimes it was more severe, requiring a complete reset of the car to get it going again. Fortunately, most of the times this happened it was possible to keep Endeavour rolling whilst the system reset and then pick up the speed again.

Clouds but sunlight. The outback is weird.

Sometimes, it sets fire to itself too...the outback is weird.

After my stint, Emil hopped in the car, and then proceeded to drive a perfect stint with absolutely no problems. A fickle thing, our Endeavour. After the control stop which we reached at the end of Emil's stint, I got back in the car and within thirty minutes she had broken down completely at the side of the road, refusing to budge despite repeated restarts. Very fickle. Perhaps it was because I'd said that those solar cells made her look fat, or something.

At this point, we were sitting under clouds, so once again the decision was made to put her on the trailer and get the car to Alice Springs, which marked the halfway point of our race.

After starting so well, I was gravely disappointed at yet another day where we had to trailer. The more frustrating thing was that the power losses seemed random and inexplicable, and left the electrical team scratching their heads as to the cause.

The usual end of day proceedings + confused Dan and Ed.

Surprisingly, after some time charging, the battery reported itself as full. And so, suspecting a loose connection somewhere to be the cause of the cut-out earlier in the day, Dan and Ed ran over the electronics with a fine comb in the evening.

We awoke for Day 5 to a nice clear sunrise, and set off with Tom in the solar car. I was in the Discovery, and since Endeavour seemed to be running sweetly, things were quite relaxed.

A relaxing sit.

By this point, the team had become pretty well oiled. The driving was relaxed and everyone knew what to do. It certainly wasn't like the tense and tumultuous Day 1. After Lucy's stint, we could see heavy cloud cover on the horizon; inwardly, I sighed. We had some inkling that the weather wasn't going to be great in the south half of Australia, but still, I had always nursed a hope that the weather reports would be wrong.

As Tom started on his stint, we could see rain in the distance, and then lightning. It seemed that the outback had gotten tired of sun, and had ordered a full blown storm for that afternoon.

Twas like driving into the mouth of (a very wet) hell.

Given that Endeavour is essentially a high voltage battery pack on wheels, and completely not waterproof, we were rightly concerned when it started to drizzle on us. However, we kept going as far as we dared, until the visibility became poor enough that Tom could not see, and then we pulled over.

Actually, this picture was taken in the Yorkshire Dales.

With rain lashing down, wind whipping all around and thunder booming overhead, we jumped out and hastily wrapped the tarp on the car, weathering the worst of the conditions. There was obviously no way we could continue driving under such conditions, so the only thing to do was to put the tarped car on the trailer and see if we could get out of the storm.

At this point, I thought I really had seen it all. The day grew dark enough that we had to use headlights, and Endeavour on the trailer was lost in a cloud of spray kicked up by the Discovery as we raced along the sodden road towards the light.

When we finally got out of the rain and lightning, it was still heavily overcast and it was nearly the end of the day. We decided to keep trailering until we reached Cadney Homestead, a remote truck stop where we made camp for the night. The idea was to cross fingers and hope for a better day on the morrow, and thus save as much battery in Endeavour as possible.

Cadney Homestead.

It turned out we weren't the only team to get caught out by the most un-Australian weather ever. Ten other teams ended up at Cadney, turning the quiet truck stop into a menagerie of solar car teams from all across the world. There was a jovial mood in the evening as teams swapped war stories and joked about the cloud, but it was still deeply frustrating. We all knew we could have done so much better if only there had been sun, and it began to seem increasingly unlikely that we would best the 2009 team's attempt of 1616 km. However, they did have perfect conditions for the whole race, and so that at least didn't bother me too much.

It rained the whole night, and when we woke on Day 6, the conditions were no different. However, we had a mostly full battery, and so whilst all the other teams opted to trailer out of Cadney, we decided to drive Endeavour till she ran flat, given that the conditions till the end of the race were predicted to be the same heavy cloud.

It was a very british thing to do, to give two fingers to the weather and drive a solar car when there wasn't any sun. I felt very proud as Endeavour slowly accelerated out of Cadney, and some of the homestead's residents turned out to wave us off. I also felt very sad, because if there was no change in the weather (and there was no reason to believe there would be), Day 6 would be the last day of driving the solar car. The worst thing for me was that we would go out with a whimper; an insignificant speck of a solar car team who had been ground down by the vast, merciless outback and were forced, with no battery left, to finally concede an ignominious defeat at the side of the road.

Eking out every last kilometre

And so it was. We lowered the speed in an effort to up efficiency, crawling along sometimes at 40 km/h or less and managed a full stint with me in the car. Then Emil hopped in and we carried on. It drizzled on and off, however we didn't consider it heavy enough to stop us. But finally, inevitably, the electrical team made the decision to pull into a rest area to put the car on the trailer and call our race to an end.

However, perhaps Emil had decided he wanted one last hurrah, or perhaps he had actually mis-heard and flicked the throttle by mistake like he explained later. As the lead car pulled into the rest area, he throttled Endeavour up to the max, gunning for freedom. Personally, I think he wanted what I wanted too: for Endeavour to go out in style before it was retired for good. The lead car was quick to catch up, yet Endeavour raced along, defiant, for a few hundred metres before the low voltage protection kicked in; we had run her flat, the car had given all it had to give.

We were done.

The drive to our next campsite, Lake Hart, was a very quiet affair. Not even the spectacular scenery could lift my rather damp mood.

It's actually a salt lake - there is no water down there.

Didn't believe me?

At the evening team meeting, Alisdair laid out our plans for if there was to be sun on the final day. I nodded along but honestly I thought it was a waste of breath; the cloud was thick and blanketed the sky as far as the eye could see, and the conditions were forecasted to be the same all the way to the end. And besides, I had mentally sort of come to terms with finishing the race on such a low note, and was now ready to get to Adelaide and back to civilisation, preferably as quickly as possible.

The end was near.

A Great Australian Adventure (Part 5)

Day 2 began with a 5.30am wake up call, peanuts compared to the 4am of the day before.

The team broke camp fairly quickly whilst the solar array was propped up to receive as much of the morning sun as possible. Unfortunately, the campsite was surrounded by trees, meaning there were copious amounts of shadow and precious little direct sunlight to generate energy from.

Given the state of our battery, we decided to put the car on the trailer and drive to the next control point, Dunmarra, which is about 631 km from Darwin. We unloaded at Dunmarra, with our electrical team estimating the battery pack would be about half full after charging for 3 hours on the back of the trailer.

Prepping the car at Dunmarra

I hopped in the car and we promptly got underway. The stint was tremendously exciting for me, as it was the first time I got to drive the car in the race, and it sort of hit me as we pulled out onto the Stuart Highway that this was it - I was in this car that we had built, driving across the outback in the World Solar Challenge.

What followed was a really nice stint in the car. Ed, the electrical team member who was on telemetry, and I worked together closely to keep the power consumption completely neutral - i.e. using only what energy we could draw from the array. In order to do this, he monitored a graph and was constantly on the radio telling me to speed up slightly or slow down slightly, and I would adjust the throttle as needed.

Two and a half hours later, we stopped to change drivers to Emil. My back ached, my bladder was feeling rather full and I was sweaty and tired, but that didn't stop me from having a huge smile on my face as I jumped out. It was a great stint.

Unfortunately, the rest of the day didn't turn out so well. Emil got underway, and then we suddenly drove into a huge cloud bank, which actually turned out to be the result of a bush fire.

Bush fire

Needless to say, with the sky completely overcast, the array was getting absolutely no power, and with the battery already mostly depleted; there was no choice but for the team to put the car on the trailer and carry on from there.

After clearing the worst of the cloud, the sky was still hazy. We stopped early to point the array at the sun, hoping to gather as much energy as we could. After the good start to the day, it was frustrating that once again we had to put the car on the trailer, and although the sunset was spectacular, it didn't make for ideal conditions as far as charging the battery was concerned. Thus ended Day 2.

Day 2 sunset

Day 3 picked up pretty much where Day 2 left off, with patchy cloud and the team waking up before the dawn to get the array pointing at the rising sun. As the sun climbed higher, the clouds began to dissipate, although there was still a lot of haze around.

Levitating screwdrivers: a good omen...

However, conditions were good enough to drive so Lucy got in the car and we set off. I was pretty jealous of her as the stint proved to be a really good one, and not only was the car working well; the road was joyous to drive, with lovely winding turns and plenty of downhills which Endeavour flew down. Before we knew it, the team had arrived in Tennant Creek.

It was an extremely busy stop, with lots of teams waiting around. It turned out that because bush fires had caused road closures, the race was effectively put on hold for four hours. This was a godsend for us, as it allowed us to get four hours of charging in what was effectively midday sun. By the time we were released in the late afternoon, the battery was full.

The final stint of the day took us to Devil's Marbles, a spectacular collection of outback rocks. But not only was the scenery good, our moods were good too; Day 3 was the first day we completed fully on solar power. The car also seemed to be working well, although it required a change of tyres which was swiftly completed before the sun had set. Dinner that night was a barbecue, which was well received; nothing like a kangaroo sausage after a long hard days drive.

Devil's Marbles indeed.

The Campsite

My abiding memory of this night however, was of playing the Corn Cob game. It was a game involving several corn cobs which were left over from dinner. In the pitch darkness of the outback night, we decided that a competition was to be held to see who could throw their corn cob furthest into the outback. However, with no visual aids, the only way to judge was to listen for the soft thud as tasty snack food met outback dirt. Perhaps that we played the game at all was a sign of the mental degradation that was a natural result of spending all day cooped up in cars with one another and getting very little sleep, but it was hilarious.

This night was also memorable because of the fact that three mantis' found their deaths (indirectly) at my hands. One flew into left over cooking oil and died, another flew into the washing up water and died, and a third...I don't remember how it died, but it did, probably from flying into something it wasn't supposed to. As  Arjun, our lead car driver so eloquently summed up: "For insects that know kung-fu, they fly like retards." Tru dat.

The most important thing though was that it felt like our luck had finally turned. We had dealt with sloppy shipping companies, car crashes, broken steering wheels, road trains and hills and a flat battery and it seemed finally that the weather was turning good and we would be able to get some trouble free days to really rack up the solar kilometres. I was seriously looking forward to Day 4, where I would get the chance to drive again.

A Great Australian Adventure (Part 4)

4am, Sunday 16th October 2011.

Having gotten less than two hours of a fitful sleep, I eased myself out of bed and rubbed the bleariness from my eyes; there was no time this morning to be lying around. I gathered my things with as much co-ordination and composure one could manage at that hour of the morning, and stumbled outside into the pitch black grounds of the hostel. The sun had not yet even begun thinking of breaching the horizon.

Alisdair and myself drove the Discovery to Hidden Valley Raceway, hitched up the trailer with Endeavour and then towed it to the starting grid outside parliament square in the centre of Darwin. Even though the darkness was still absolute, there was a thrum of activity as the other teams were all unloading their cars and making last minute preparations.

By the time we had been directed to a parking spot, it had begun to lighten, and the pre-dawn glow of yet another seemingly cloudless day greeted Endeavour as she rolled off the trailer. By the time we had pushed the car to it's starting position on the grid, the sun had jumped above the horizon. It was something like 6am, and the square was still mostly empty of the general public, just the bustle of team members preparing their machines and early bird media crews buzzing around the big names such as Nuon, Tokai and Michigan. Thankfully, we were ignored for the most part; I was pretty hungry and probably wouldn't have reacted very well to being interviewed.

With the car on the grid, we made last minute preparations such as radio checks, taping on the fairing covers and a quick test to make sure the car actually worked, and then it was off to get a rushed breakfast from a convenient burger van and to wait it out till the start.

As the sun rose higher, the crowds began to form; fascinated members of the general public, press crews and team members made for a extremely exciting and bustling atmosphere.

The start line

Polesitters. Team Twente.

Busy grid!

Michigan!

As we were 30th, we were among one of the last teams to get underway. When the time came, Tom, our first driver of the day, strapped himself in and then we were brought forward to the starting line, where a few  words were said about us by Chris Selwood, the event manager. Then, a flag was waved and we were off!

Since Alisdair, Lucy and I were to be in the Discovery for the first stint, we dallied around Darwin for a little while in order to buy some needed items (such as toothpaste for me!) before we hopped in and set off after Endeavour. From previous discussions, we knew that Endeavour would be attempting to stick a 60kph constant speed strategy until we had further information regarding the energy balance between how much the motor was taking out and how much the array was providing.

Even so, we were surprised by the amount of teams we'd passed in the Discovery before we caught up to Endeavour. It seemed we'd made up at least six or seven positions, one of which was on the race leaders - Team Twente, who stopped just ten minutes into the race with some sort of glitch or gremlin. However, they soon flew past again.

Twente zoom zoom zoom.

After navigating the roundabouts and traffic lights of Darwin, the Stuart Highway opened up into a two lane carriageway, and the convoy settled into it's first stint of running. Things appeared to be going well, with us sticking to our 60 kph plan which would see us complete the whole race on solar power if nothing went wrong. There was occasional cloud cover, but apart from that, the sun was good and the day was a typical Darwin 37 degrees - nearly ideal conditions for solar driving. Unfortunately, due to a blown fuse on the chase car, we were unable to get telemetry readings regarding the net power usage of the car.

About 90km out of Darwin, a sudden radio call from Tom informed us that he had lost power. The convoy pulled over. It was a little bit of a sickening feeling, but I crossed my fingers that it was not a major problem. By the time the car had pulled over however, the fault had somehow righted itself, which provided a mystery for the electrical team to chew over. In the meantime, we got back on the road and continued driving.

Passing a stopped team

We tried to push Tom's stint a little bit longer due to the unplanned stop, however, just before we were about to change driver, Tom reported another complete loss of power. This time it turned out to be a bit more serious. The convoy pulled over and we took our safety positions, with me on the rear safety flag. Dan and Ed worked furiously to try and diagnose and fix the problem, which turned out to be a failed inductor on the steering wheel, which had literally fallen off due to the heat and vibration.

Dan doing some roadside troubleshooting (followed by roadside soldering).

With some creative thinking, they patched in the old steering wheel to use for throttle control - meaning the driver now had two wheels with them in the car - one for steering and the other for throttle!

The whole process of fixing the driver controls cost us about an hour, meaning that as we got underway we were faced with a difficult decision: the race is made up of control points, which have a closing time that the teams have to make. Otherwise, they are forced to trailer their cars because if you miss two consecutive control points then you are disqualified from the race and thus cannot do any more solar kilometres. On the first day however, the event organisers stipulated that the teams had to reach Katharine by 3pm, otherwise they would be forced to trailer.

Our goal this year was to complete the whole race on solar power, and as such, we definitely didn't want to trailer. However, we also weren't sure whether we could sustain a faster solar speed than 60kph as our telemetry had not been working. We decided to give it a go anyway and set out with Lucy trying to maintain a steady 70kph. This speed would, given no other problems, allow us to get to Katherine with literally minutes to spare.

As we got back on the road with Lucy, I didn't feel too worried; sure, we had faced quite a big setback in terms of time, but I was confident that the team would still be able to make the Katherine checkpoint, which would be one of the tightest ones to make.

We continued along the Stuart Highway, being overtaken by road trains (very scary), and overtaking other teams which had stopped (very gratifying). One thing we learned quickly that our assumption that the outback was flat was pretty much wrong. Of course, by no means was it like Scotland, but it was fairly undulating, and that made it hard to maintain a constant speed as the weight of our car meant we struggled up the hills only to shoot down the other side. I felt that we definitely didn't manage to optimise our power draw on the first day; going up hills too fast and going down even faster, but that was expected, given the inexperience of the team. Despite all this, it felt like we were making good progress.

We had been warned beforehand that out of Darwin, there was one "big hill", which the whole team was looking out for. However, even though we were prepared for it, when it finally hit us, circumstances conspired against us to make Endeavour grind to a halt in the middle of the road!

First, a road train pulled out in front of us on the downhill stretch before the hill, and then, it was baulked by another solar car team which had stopped in the middle of the road. It braked suddenly, and we were following close behind which meant that we lost all momentum just as we reached the foot of the hill. From there, it was a painful losing battle against gravity as I watched from the driver's seat of the Discovery; Endeavour's speed slowly dropped, and then it slowed to a crawl, and then it could go forward no more.

Radio messages buzzed frantically as Alisdair and Tom jumped out of the Discovery to push Endeavour to the side of the road. I jumped out as well, before being reminded by Tom that leaving a car parked in the middle of the Stuart Highway probably wasn't a very good idea. At the side of the road it became clear very quickly that the only thing to do was to continue pushing the car to the top, which Alisdair and Tom set out to do. The key thing was to get the motor out of six-step mode, which is a start up setting that isn't really ideal for hill climbing, and that meant going above 20kph or so; a full out sprint up a hill in the Australian heat. Alisdair and Tom managed it with aplomb and the car began speeding up slowly again as it crested the steepest part of the climb, though I was worried one or both of them would have a heart attack as they climbed back into the Discovery, panting for their lives.

A torturous climb

Crisis over, we resumed convoy driving, except that with the time lost on the hill, we realised we had to increase the cruising speed again, upping it to 75kph.

Some time down the road, we stopped for another driver change, chafing at the lost time. When we rolled out again, we realised we had to up the speed to 80kph. We were literally racing towards Katherine. Even at that point, I held hopes that we would be able to make it by the skin of our teeth; and once we got there, the half an hour mandatory stop would give us time to recharge the battery a little before we continued on.

However, it wasn't to be, and around 80km away from Katherine, Tom reported another loss of power. This time, it wasn't to do with any particular fault; we had run the battery flat.

I've thought a lot about that first day, wondering whether if we had driven the car a little bit more efficiently we would have been able to eke another 80km from it. However, as much as I wish it, I doubt that whatever we did would have been enough; our car was just not efficient enough. We either needed to not have the fault with the steering wheel, or we needed a better car. It was a crushing blow to say the least; all that effort expended in preparing the car for the race and on the first day of asking, we fell short of the mark. It was a bitter pill to swallow.

Car is trailered, team is unhappy

We trailered to the Katherine control point to check in, and then after our 30 minute mandatory stop, carried on trailering to a nearby campsite around 381 km from Darwin. Work was done on the car to make it usable with only one steering wheel (the old one, unfortunately), along with other various electrical bits and pieces. A lovely chicken stir fry helped to cheer everyone up somewhat after the deep disappointment of the afternoon, and the team began to refocus on our new target: to beat the 2009 team who managed 1616 km on solar power.

Camped at the end of Day 1

A Great Australian Adventure (Part 3)

On the face of it, although the grid position for a week long solar endurance race is hardly important compared to say, the grid position for the Abu Dhabi grand prix (where despite the ridiculous straight and 2x DRS zones, the top 10 positions on lap 2 were the top ten at the end of the race), I was still mighty excited about it as my phone alarm went off at some ridiculous hour in the morning (5:30 I believe).

This meant that, despite the fact that in England I find getting out of bed difficult until it's well past noon, on that Saturday I had no trouble shaking off sleep. I headed to the track along with the rest of the drivers and our team manager, Alisdair, for the drivers briefing which commenced at an early hour in the morning. I think it was 7.30am, or something like that. I forget. It was hardly the highlight of the day, even if there was a massive spider which we disturbed from its early morning basking.

After the briefing was over, it was time for the qualifying session, which consisted of a timed lap around Hidden Valley Raceway along with a slalom test and a brake test. I for one was feeling rather nervous about the brake test, given that Endeavour is a pretty heavy car. I was also feeling rather nervous about the timed lap, given that the suspension arms were rubbing on the wheel rims under cornering - not unlike the sort of thing which could lead to catastrophic suspension collapse if the forces were too large. Basically, I was feeling a bit nervous, but it's always good to have a bit of nerves, I guess.

All 37 teams that were to be competing this year milled about in the paddock and pitlane, waiting for their car numbers to be called out. There was a buzz in the air - I think for everyone it was an anticipatory moment - we would all get to see how our cars finally matched up to each other on the track after the months and months of work that had been put into each of our challengers. I was not expecting us to be one of the earlier runners to go given that we still had to have the stickers for Endeavour signed off as the replacement ones had only been affixed late on Friday. Whilst we waited, some of the big guns put in their laps, with team Nuon leading the way.

The pitlane teemed with people

Surprisingly, we were called up a lot earlier than expected - sometime around 8:30. I jumped in the car and strapped myself in. I had to fight down a little bubble of excitement as I flicked the switches and began to trundle towards the end of the pitlane; I knew that I had to keep my blood cool and to drive a conservative lap to avoid damaging the car in hard cornering, the first of which was not helped in any way by the spectators standing along the pit wall turning to take pictures as the car slipped past them.

Leaving the garage

Waiting for go.

It took another five minutes of waiting at the end of the pitlane before I was given the go ahead, and throttled up to max to trundle onto the circuit itself. There was now nothing but the track - slightly distorted by the canopy, the car - a mass of squeaks and vibrations and motor whine, and me. Endeavour isn't really the nicest car to drive by any means, and I think even as solar cars come it's not that good; trying to hustle it around a racetrack was rather like trying to wrestle a whale into a postbox, but at that moment, it felt pretty damn cool.

I pushed as hard as I could, listening for the slightly muted rub of metal on metal that I knew indicated when the rims were contacting the suspension and so drove the lap trying to keep on the threshold of that. The rubbing sound would let me know when I'd reached the limit, and beyond that there was the lovely smell of burning rubber, which I did sniff after taking the lovely downhill double apex left hander a bit too quickly, but c'est la vie.

Solar zoom

After the timed lap came a short slalom test which was cleared without difficulty, and then the braking test which was also passed without difficulty. I was surprised how well Endeavour braked - doing it in half the prescribed length, and I'm told the scrutineer was surprised with how many cut cable ties and other bits of junk came flying out of the front fairing as a result of the sudden stop. Anyway, with everything cleared, I trundled back into the pits and the team set about getting the car on the trailer and with the final packing for the race. Later, we found out that we had qualified 30th, with a time of 3:11. Pole went to team Twente from Holland, with a time of 2:02.

Packing was a fairly arduous process, given that our tools and equipment were spread between two places, and also because we were fairly tight on space as the van we rented was not that big. There was also a lot of other stuff to pack, including food supplies as well as personal belongings (and many people had brought fairly large suitcases). I packed until just after noon along with several others sorting out the toolboxes and everything else at Hidden Valley Raceway before we stopped at the hostel for lunch, and then went to another WSC meeting in the afternoon. At the meeting, we were told such things as: "don't drive on the wrong side of the road" and "road trains can kill you to death", and we were also assigned our first observer - a Malaysian man who turned out to have a serious chain smoking habit.

As we left to go to our workshop at BOC to grab the rest of our things, disaster struck. Our support van - the one which would carry the bulk of the things like the food, water and jerry cans for fuel as well as all the spare parts and so on, had it's back window smashed out as it was backed into a truck at the parking lot. Late afternoon on a Saturday meant that all the rental places were closed, and at any rate, there was no money left in the account to pay for the damage.

The 'oh crap' moment

Who needs windows anyway...

With no other choice available to us, we decided to patch the window up the best we could. Some creative thinking led to the liberal usage of vinyl wrap, duct tape and a sign stolen from our pit garage at Hidden Valley to improvise a rear windscreen. It was then cleared with the authorities in Darwin, who fortunately allowed us to drive with our temporary window down to Adelaide.

Engineering at it's finest

With that crisis over, the packing continued. It was interspersed with dinner, a lovely lamb kofte made by our resident chef Oli A, and staring at a distant thunderstorm. It was perhaps 50km away, but still it was a dazzling display of nature as forks of lightning streaked between the clouds, lighting it up from the inside like a flickering lamp wrapped with fluff. I said at the time it was fairly ominous, and had I known then what was to happen during the race, I'd have said it was a foreshadowing of things to come.

The night wore on. We were originally hoping to be packed fairly early, and thus be able to be well rested for the start on Sunday, but with the incident with the van taking up so much time to sort out, it began to look like some of us wouldn't get any sleep at all. We sent the two solar car drivers who would be driving the first shifts to bed (Tom and Lucy), and the rest of us laboured on. The packing process was complicated by the fact that we had a lot of stuff to pack, and a very limited amount of space to pack it in. This meant we had to be pretty intelligent with the way we packed to not only maximise the usage of the space we had available, but to make sure items ended up where they were needed - for example having some spare tyres and toolboxes and multimeters with the chase car and so on.

Midnight came and went. Drunk people floated on by, wondering as to what the hell we were doing. Then, another disaster; I misplaced the key for the chase car. This nearly drove me half mad with panic, as there was no way we could enter the race without a chase car, and there would be no time tomorrow morning to get a replacement key as we would be leaving too early: we had to find it or else we couldn't race. I nearly despaired as we frantically searched; how would I be able to live with myself if I let the team down by something so stupid and simple? Luckily, fifteen minutes later saw it found nestled snugly underneath some stickers in the back of the lead car. A few deep breaths later to settle my racing heart and cold sweats, and I turned back to one remaining task at hand - getting everyone's personal belongings into the back of the Land Rover Discovery. It was basically a 3D game of Tetris, and it ended up turning out that we had just enough room for everything that needed to go in (with some squeezing and shoving and cursing). A timely stroke of luck.

Exhausted, I collapsed into bed at around 2am, setting the alarm clock for a 4am wake up call. Tomorrow was race day. Tomorrow, we would start this epic adventure. It dawned on me, just as I began to drift off, that it would be an adventure; we would be out in the middle of nowhere, sometimes perhaps a hundred kilometres from the nearest medical aid or food or water. This wouldn't be like traipsing around Dartmoor; if things went wrong badly out here, the consequences could be dire.

I couldn't wait.

A Great Australian Adventure (Part 2)

Scrutineering

Bright and early on Thursday morning, we rolled out of Hidden Valley to meet our scrutineering time slot, where over the next couple of hours our car would be prodded and poked by World Solar Challenge officials to make sure that it complied with all the regulations. There were checks for everything from the length and the width, to how fast the drivers could enter and exit the car, to the lights and the brakes and the electrical systems.

In the end, our car passed on all the important things, but we did pick up a few black marks for the car being a little too long and too wide (10mm and 7mm respectively), although there was nothing we could do about it, as the shell was inherited from 2009. Our rear view camera positioning was also a little bit poor, and there were also some miscellaneous items such as putting high voltage stickers on certain components and covering up a few circuit boards so they could not be inadvertently touched.

The whole process I found rather arduous and extremely tedious, although it did give an opportunity to spy out the cars of the top teams such as Tokai University.

The interior of Tokai (2009 winners)

It was an exercise in envy, as I compared the pristine carbon fibre interior of their car to our aluminium and dirt ridden behemoth. I wondered idly what would have happened if I'd "accidentally" tripped and fell onto it; probably nothing except making a lot of japanese people very angry I guess. The most frustrating thing about  it for me was that I knew if we had had the infrastructure and the support that these guys got, we could have built a car which could have been just as good if not better, as half the battle in making a good solar car is manufacturing it to a good standard, and whilst we as students can come up with a world class design, we simply do not have the manufacturing expertise to turn that design into a high quality reality.

Anyway, scrutineering session over, we towed the car back to our workshop at BOC to make the necessary modifications to get the car signed off on the following day.

Friday rolled around - the day before qualifying, and a brief trip was made to the scrutineering pavilion to sign off the remaining items on the car, as well as for the WSC officials to check our convoy vehicles, as when on the road during the race, the solar car had to have a lead car and a chase car driving in convoy with it, and these cars had certain requirements such as signage, CB radio equipment and flashing lights. 

Unfortunately, BA had lost our stickers for the car and convoy, which meant the signage for our chase and lead cars were made from tape (a key ingredient of any solar car team) and cardboard, however, hasty assurances were made to the WSC official that we would have a better solution for the race, and he seemed to be satisfied. So, all was checked and found to be in good order, and we were sent on our merry way.

The rest of Friday passed in a bit of a blur, but there was probably some packing, and buying of food, and filling of water drums and shenanigans of that variety involved. Alisdair (our team manager) stayed at the track till late to sticker up the car with the replacements that had arrived. I had nothing in particular to do, so I tried to relax as best as I could, and turned in early, though with thoughts of qualifying day dancing around my mind and the anticipation and excitement that came with it, it took awhile before I was able to settle down to sleep...

A Great Australian Adventure (Part 1)

Australia. It's home to the Sydney Opera House, a spiffing collection of coral, a big rock located in the middle of nowhere, as well as a whole bunch of people who can't pronounce "good day" properly.

It's also home to the World Solar Challenge, a 3021km endurance race for solar cars of all shapes and sizes, taking place in a bienniel fashion, pitting competitors against the harsh environment of the Australian bush (and sometimes each other) in a week long marathon from Darwin to Adelaide.

The route

Having worked hard on the car all year, I and the rest of the Cambridge University Eco Racing team were excited to finally get out to Australia to pit ourselves and our car, a tuned up version of the team's 2009 challenger, against the odds. Except, we had to finish building it first, because trying to obtain a degree from Cambridge doesn't really leave a lot of time to be building a car as well.

And so, I arrived in Darwin on the 15th September, stumbling bleary eyed through the tiny airport at 4:30am, to be met by Oli Smith, a fellow team member who'd kindly offered to pick me up. It was a short trip from the airport to the backpacker's hostel where we were staying; Dingo Moon Lodge, which I thoroughly recommend to anyone who is looking for such places.

It was still too early to check in when I arrived, so I lounged by the pool, trying to get it into my head that I was actually in Australia. To be fair, even at the end of my trip, I couldn't get over how familiar some of the places felt to the UK. In fact, to sum Australia up in equation form, it would be simply: AUS = UK + SUN + KANGAROO + ACCENT.

Dingo Moon Lodge

With the car due to arrive a few days after I did, we set about enjoying the sun and the pool, knowing that once the car arrived, we would be fairly busy with finishing it and testing it for the race. A few days passed, which we spent sunbathing, visiting local tourist sites like Litchfield National Park, a Crocodile Farm and an Aviation Museum - it was feeling like a proper holiday, which I think everyone enjoyed. Some time was also taken out to visit hire car companies to sort out support vehicles for the race, as well as to plan out various logistical issues. 

Termite Mounds

Wangi falls.

It was on the way back from the Aviation Museum that we had our first mishap. A novice driver plowed into  the side of our hire car at an intersection, after failing to give way, thinking she had the right of way to turn.. Although the resulting damage didn't appear so bad at first glance, our hire car sustained enough damage that it had to be taken back to Thrifty to be swapped. It also set us back around 3000 Australian Dollars - the standard excess fee, and although we could be expected to get all of it back as the accident was not our fault, the process would take months and effectively emptied CUER's account for the race - a massive setback, given that we are not a cash flush team to begin with.

Our car

Her (dad's) car - ouch

We then received word from the shipping company, Maersk, that our container had arrived in Darwin and would be available for pickup on Tuesday - this was a little later than our original estimate, but still not a big deal. A few more days passed, and Tuesday rolled around, with no sign of our container being released to us, and then things began to get rather more serious. Thus began an epic struggle on Alisdair, our team manager's, part to wade through a mire of bureaucracy to claim what was rightfully ours. He battled with the dark lord of forms, the evil empress of red tape and the Jabberwocky that was the Maersk finance department in an epic struggle lasting a week and a half that involved frayed tempers, heated words and flying detergent. (A more detailed account is given here)

The rest of us were eager to help, but were also rather powerless to, and so we were left to our own devices, frittering away the time by sunbathing, lounging in the pool, and reading. The frustration levels steadily climbed as we realised the four weeks that we had budgeted for completing the car slowly became three, and then as each day passed I began to see us having to pull increasingly longer shifts and to sleep less and less, and the prospect of that was something not even the brilliant weather could cancel out. Finally, once the container had been released to us, four weeks had become two, and we knew we needed to make every minute count if we were to be able to present a decent race car for scrutineering.

We began to set about the work in a determined fashion, resolving to make the best of what we had. I for one was determined not to come to Australia with a supposedly revised car only to end up doing worse than the team in 2009, who covered 1616 km on solar power. The arrival of several more team members who provided more manpower helped greatly.

Hard at work

On most days of that first week when we got the car, we pulled something close to twelve hour shifts, but our efforts paid off as we began to cross items off our massive to-do list. We were putting all of our frustrations into energy to make the car work, and I for one felt quite pleased at the end of each day, because you could look back and see visible signs of progress on all areas of the car, and each day we took one step closer towards the reality of having a finished car. Of course we hit snags, especially with a few electrical gremlins which seemed to be ghosts in the machine but there was nothing that we couldn't solve or work around.

After a week of this frenzied activity, we had a car which we felt was ready to test - we knew this would be of paramount importance due to the extreme endurance nature of the race; reliability is a key factor in the World Solar Challenge, and the only way we were going to ensure reliability was to test as much as possible. So, once the electrical and mechanical systems of the car were ready, we took it out to the dedicated test road, not caring that we had not yet finished fitting the new canopy or the fairing covers, or even painted the car. This earned us some funny looks from some of the more established teams that were also out testing as our mottled black and white and bare carbon fibred livery appeared next to their pristine professional paint jobs.

Endeavour Mk II

Twente

I didn't care though; we weren't out to compete with those top teams, and we were putting kilometres on the  car without any major faults, although for that first test the telemetry was not working and there was a minor problem with the steering wheel having too much play. I ended that day with a big smile on my face, looking like I'd cried tears of joy, as due to the lack of a canopy, all the wind in the outback went straight into my eyes as I was driving Endeavour along, leading to tears streaming down my face and the whites of my eyes becoming as red as Twente's car. A minor sacrifice for a good day of solar car testing.

We returned to the workshop to put the finishing touches on the car, such as the lights and the canopy, before taking the car out for another test.

On the road

Again, the day went extremely well, apart from a rather scary moment at the end of the last stint, where the handbrake mechanism came loose, meaning the brakes could no longer be applied; cue the car skittering across gravel as the driver screamed in the radio that she'd lost the brakes. Luckily, an escape road allowed Endeavour and driver to escape unharmed (if a little shaken) and the problem was quickly fixed.

We then decided to relocate to Hidden Valley Raceway, from our workshop at BOC Gas and Gear. This was the local racetrack that the organisers had booked for the event, where track testing could be conducted and this was where the dynamic scrutineering was to be done. Over twenty teams had already congregated here, and there was a buzz of engineering in the air, as all the teams raced to sort out their own problems in time for scrutineering and the race. I was pleasantly surprised to find that we appeared to be one of the more "ready" teams, given that there were still some who were still welding a chassis together, others still dealing with major electrical issues (like a battery that kept cutting out), and mechanical issues (such as major wheel vibration). 

However, we weren't without our own issues; upon taking the car out on the track with the updated wheels, it became obvious that there was not enough clearance between the wheel rim and the suspension, leading to rubbing during cornering. The problem was alleviated somewhat by an evening spent with an angle grinder, but was never eliminated entirely. Apart from that, we also encountered some weird electrical cut out issues, which was eventually traced to a dodgy isolation switch. The suspension rubbing issue effectively scuppered our hopes of a good grid position, but it would not be a big factor for the race, as the Stuart Highway is basically a straight line. This made me feel good about our prospects, as the car was basically working well, and appeared to be reliable from the 400 kms or so of testing that we had done.

I also felt really good about the atmosphere at the circuit - every team was friendly, and there was genuine interest between teams for each others cars and the different ways in which the other teams had done things, and although the World Solar Challenge is a race, the spirit present wasn't one of competition at all costs; it was one of collaboration and a shared sense of the adventure that everyone would be embarking on. Warm fuzzy feelings yeah!

Pit lane at Hidden Valley

As the car neared completion, there was even time for most of the team to take half a day off to relax and rest themselves before beginning to pack everything in the workshop, ready to go into the support vehicles. 

Finally, on the Wednesday before the race, with the car painted, the drivers practised in getting in and out in under 15 seconds (a WSC regulation) and with everything crossed off our to-do list on the car, we were ready for scrutineering the next morning, where the World Solar Challenge officials would check whether our car met the regulations or not and judge our eligibility to enter.

To be continued...