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