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...