Race day 1

Race day 1: 25 October 2009

We've made it to Katherine, camping at a camp site will all the facilities.

What a day! If it can go wrong.....

The start was a little different, no 1 minute intervals between cars, just roll up in order and off you go. Start was 8:30 today, finish at 5:30, with no allowance for later start times. We started about 8:48 am.

Drama no long after the start, with Nuna trying regen at the first set of lights, overvoltage protection and it all went dead. Took about 5 minutes to get going again. There's always one isn't there!

We got away ok, passing many cars broken down on the side of the road. First Wolar World one, then we passed Heliox (still running) Then Malay uni (10), also running, Istanbul one the side of the road, Willerton running, Leeming on the side of the road, Sunswift on the side of the road, Bocruiser on the side of the road, and McMaster on the side of the road. That was the first two hours, we were cruising at 60, but having radio trouble with a lot of noise in the car, and only using the radio speaker. We stopped to try a backup hand held which the driver put next to his ear and could hear much easier. We also tried to clarify radio calls and meter reading formats and procedures, and we were off. Theis worked better (not great) and we started to get sensible reading from the car. They were not good. Battery getting very low, higher motor power than expected, and lower solar current. We slowed down to try to replenish the batteries, but that ended up being about 30 kph.

We pulled in at Adelaide river (114km) for our first driver change and to check out the car. (11:45) While turning in we noticed the back tyre was almost flat, that's where the power's going! We pump it up and get ready to pull out again, but there was no power! Time to take a closer look and change the tyre while we are at it. The "Turbo" has been jamming, so we took a look at that and the surrounding wiring, but no luck. So we decide to change the controller. But the new controller is intermitent too, with dodgy connectons in the plugs. It's an old car!

Time was ticking on (14:00), and the Katherine control stop closed at 4pm, we still had 200km to go and no chance of solaring there in time. So we repack the trailers to trailer the car to Katherine. Meanwhile I changed the controller back again, and working in the shade, tried it out and it worked fine! But we still had to trailer.

What happened? We think it was just over temp cutout. The controller is cooled by a duct in the bottom of the car and at 30kph there aint much cooling. At the same time We were using much more torque against the flat tyre, and it was stinking hot!

What about the array? Our emergency disconnect cable was pulling on the breaker and when we went over bumps it turned the array off, several times after resetting it until we found the problem. We lost a lot of array time there.

Late at the camp ground we found another problem, several of the 30 odd MPPT's were off, and the biggest sections too! Finally one MPPT was dead - also a big section. We managed to wire two sections (connected to the dead MPPT) in series and directly to the battery via a diode and switch. We'll see tomorrow if it works!

So we trailered to Katherine, getting there at 4:45. Now the rules say half an hour stop and no trailering forward outside race time (after 5:30 today), so at 5:15 we trailered another 20km down the road, marked it, then trailered back to Katherine motor camp. We start tomorrow at 8am 20km down the road.

We plan to trailer to Dunamara tomorrow morning to catch up, and make it before Dunmara closes. We hope to be there about 11am, unload the car, and driver after the 30 min stop (including the unloading). All going well we will have a clean run to Tennant creek, (early Tuesday morning), then Alice by mid Wednessday.

After that the control stops close at crazy times, and get this, we have to be in Adelaide on Friday night! So we will have to trailer from not far past Alice right through to Adelaide. Completing maybe 1000km.

We should rename it the Global Green Trailering Challenge! This is simply crazy. There is absolutely no point in trailering from Darwin to Aldelaide in 6 days, just so that a solar car can run a few kms if there is time between trailering. Put simply, this is at best a 2 day "test run" for slower team, on bits on the Stuart highway. They don't even get a chance to sort out their on road problems. This is not a solar challenge, it is a pointless exersize in trailering. Slower teams would be better advise to simply arrive two weeks early and go out testing on the other highways, clock up some good kms without officials telling the move along, where they can get a chance to actually drive the car for more than two days, then simply drive the first day, trailer it back to darwin and ship the car back home.

Speaking of which, that is exactly what Umicore have done. Not on purpose, but they have trashed their car into a tree just after Katherine, and totaled it. Same with Aurora, both cars, not into trees, but badly damaged. Aurora 101 are fixing their car and will start again Tomorrow from where they span out after a tyre blowout. Apparently they span out and broke their front Axle, amoungst other damage.

There are now only 5 or 6 cars that will be able to finish the race in time. What a joke! What the HELL are the officials thinking. The appear to have absolutely no idea what solar car racing is about, why people do it, or how much effort people go to to come here and attempt to drive across Australia on Solar power alone.