Typically, the first appointment was a safety briefing. This was exhilarating. Finally, after a brief skirmish with the (currently broken) driver display and driver selection (rock paper scissors against Nathan), I hit the track.

So at this point the car was configured to be horrendously overpowered in terms of torque, but with a top speed of about 60mph. I had a radio, but I couldn't hear it because the motor was making the sounds of a dying planet. We thought we had conquered the display, but it was merely biding its time and gave up about 3 meters into the lap. So I was in the car, with no idea what the battery level was or how fast I was going.

It was fun. I went very fast. It was pretty clear that we'd forgotten to build a solar car and had accidentally built a sports car instead. Apparently they announced over the intercom that I was drifting slightly in the hairpin... great success.

solarcar!

After the hot lap I was shunted onto the drag strip where they wanted to do some proper scrutineering. Basically this involved driving a slalom at 35kph and then doing a brake test. Of course I had no idea what my speed was, so I went as fast as I could. I think I took the slalom at about 60kph... at the brake test they told me I'd gone far too fast and had to do it again. I wasn't exactly sure why they thought my brakes would be worse if I was going slower... needless to say, Apogee passed without a problem.

Later they announced the lap times- we came fifth with a lap time of 2 minutes 8 seconds, after Aurora, Nuon, Tokai and an Audi TT.  This makes us the first american team to start, one place ahead of Michigan. In 2007 we started one place ahead of Michigan. In 2007 we were involved in an accident where the Michigan solarcar hit their lead vehicle (so I'm told). I am hoping this does not happen tomorrow.

Audi TT

We were actually approached by a member of the Michigan team (I think she was doing interviews of the different teams... this is far more organised than we will ever be) who said she'd sacrifice herself to save their car, in the event of a repeat of last year. Brave girl. I think I speak for Marvin! and myself when I say that anyone on the Stanford team would happily sacrifice Apogee for a decent steak.

Marvin! weakened by spider

More photos in the gallery

P.S. My lap time was 2:08. The lap is around 3km, so apparently I averaged a shade over 50mph. The car is limited in this configuration to 60mph. I am very proud of this.

At this point, we were legitimately scared. Upon arriving at the racetrack, DC started vomiting blood, so we took him to the hospital. Luckily, DC was able to game the system, just like he gamed the catalog computers at the City Library in Melbourne and turned them into a coding machines.  He talked a nurse and got free medical advice, then took the next day to recover.

Next was Marvin!.  We suspected that we had imported dangerous American species into the country when Sasha found a black widow in the undercarriage of our solar car van.  Marvin! was bitten by a spider on our epic 35-hour drive from Cooper Pedy to Darwin.  His foot swelled up, but he ignored it.  To be fair, he had not eaten breakfast.  At scrutineering, the judges decided that the problem with our car was that Marvin! had a swollen ankle.  We agreed emphatically, and sent him to the hospital.  Although our safety officer Lucie had treated him with antihistamines and an elastic bandage the night before, the doctors were able to one-up her and gave Marvin! antibiotics and a better elastic bandage.  Once again, we were able to defeat the inhospitable "tropical" ecosystem of Darwin with science.  To be fair, Marvin! had eaten all of the black widow's babies.

Speaking of babies and scrutineering, we passed scrutineering, with the exception of our American CB radios and legacy "skater" helmet.  Once again, we learned that Australia likes helmets (did you know that it is illegal to ride a bicycle in this country if you don't have a piece of foam on your head?).  Besides this we were told that our two massively strong steel rollbars were okay, but technically there should only be one and it should be constructed of a brittle, difficult to model material such as crabon fibre.  The judges were almost as impressed with our door as they were with the hydraulic action of the banana slug car.  However, our car paled in comparison to Bochum's newest car, the BoCruiser, which resembles a normal car more than any other solar car ever and has elaborate crabon fibre work including a beautiful crabon fibre throne.

Bocruiser at Scrutineering: Note the Crabon Fibre Throne.

Also note that the Bottom Shell Slopes upwards and is hollow in the back.

Speaking of crabon fibre thrones, we built the fifth iteration of our seating pad.  The first two American ones were okay, but we left them in America.  The pink foam cushion cracked in half, and my folded therma-rest attacked Ben's legs and made them go to sleep.  The new cushion is a wedge of dual density foam, and proves's Nathan's superiority at designing beautiful and ergonomic creations out of materials that can only be manipulated with scissors.  Also, we were able to fix our fairing crunch with some bent aluminum plate and a wet layup, which made our car seem heavier when it weighed in at 200 kg.

Another great success was some debugging of our array.  Even the luck-bearing insect that we encapsulated into one of our panels was unable to ward away evil solar demons.  We did, however, discover the issues that were preventing us from getting as much power as our array should theorhetically be producing.  Between unwired cables, miswired cables, broken code, a short within a cell, and a short to the top shell, we have now diagnosed all of our problems, and even discovered solutions for most of them.  Our electrical team has been working around the clock, and their efforts are both appreciated and vital to the success of our team.

In short, great success.  Also, McDonalds has icee frozen drinks here, which is amazing, and well known by all solar car teams working on their cars at the Hidden Valley Racetrack.

So we got to Alice Springs about three hours ago. Alice Springs is the half way point between Adelaide and Darwin. This morning we did our final solarcar tests before Darwin- the array was generating about 75% the theoretical maximum at noon. Some of this is due to known broken panels that we'll replace. There's a couple other random problems we have to diagnose, but generally things look good.

We're not allowed to drive the solarcar in the northern territories until we get to the racetrack, so we're trailering it up to Darwin as fast as we can go. We're going to drive all night and all tomorrow. The last sign said 1290km to Darwin, and we're currently cruising at about 75 kmph so we expect to get there tomorrow evening.

More updates sporadically.

In an enormous boost to our confidence, we have discovered that the truck we hired to carry the solarcar is slower than the solarcar itself. Significantly. It tops out at 90... kph. Based on our calculations, this is not quick enough to evade an average dropbear attack. More importantly, it's not going to be able to keep up with the solarcar during the race, so we may have to make some... modifications.

DC and solarcar, working as one

The biggest problem we faced during the 1 hour test drive was the extreme inaccuracy of our weather prediction systems

"There's no rain anywhere between here and Adelaide"

Here's another photo of the Australian countryside. If you look closely, you might be able to spot the solarcar in the foreground.

I carefully managed to avoid shooting the rain clouds

as usual, the solar car is singlehandedly motivated by Sasha

We received the shipping container with the van and solar car at long last. After an adventure involving a guy with a crowbar (hello, Dr. Freeman) and an air compressor, we had the solar car in the truck and the van driving with unknown legality on Australian roads (take that, speed cameras). We then drove over to a local automotive trade school for some workspace. Over the next several hours, we worked on prepping the car for our impending journey to Adelaide, and then to Darwin.

But enough of that. Back to the major theme, THE SOLAR CAR IS HERE!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

eh? you thought you could read a post without a picture specifically of Marvin!? what were you thinking!

marvin! is excited!

recognize that mess? it's something we brought with us from the solar car shop.

there is one thing left to say. Great Success!

No, I lied. We don't have the car. However, we just got off the phone with the shipping company, and they said that neither customs nor quarantine even looked in the container, and that we will have it by 2pm tomorrow when it gets unloaded from the boat. This is very excellent because it means we will get a chance to test it before the race starts.

We're going to spend tomorrow afternoon working on the panels, and aim to leave at dawn Wednesday morning (err... in this country its Monday today, so we get the car Tuesday afternoon and leave on Wednesday). This means we should have plenty of time to get to the start of the race before the race starts.

In other news, defending champions Nuon recently suffered an accident while testing- it looks like they had a blow out which knocked them off the road, similar to what happened to equinox, our previous car. They've been working around the clock the past couple days to get their car fixed up in time for the race. We all hope that they'll be ready in time- it's a beautiful car.

Expect more updates (and photos!) tomorrow after we get the car!

cue the debussy...

It may sound like a Hardy Boys mystery....truth is, it's not. Matt, Lucie and I took a break from city life to go camping and sightseeing and penguin-finding on Phillip Island, a small* island around two hours from Melbourne. Why? I caught a bit of the wanderlust going around and wanted to see a bit of the coast before we head through the outback. The others liked the idea, so we booked a campsite in a little town called New Haven (Victoria, not Connecticut, which led to an incident involving a 20-something-thousand mile route planned by google).

lucie staring into the vast emptiness of the (new) trusty solar car van

*not worth invading if you're an 18th century colonial power

And when I say campsite, I mean corner of a field. We got our campsite, wandered around New Haven for a little bit, bought some food to eat/cook, and headed back. On this walk, Matt fell in love with a bridge. Ask him about it sometime. It's a really nice bridge. This is a picture of Matt and his favorite bridge.

he's in love

While making the curry, we talked to a local junior who was on the island for a golf tournament. If he ends up reading the blog, hi Bryce! He wanted some advice on which colleges to go to in order to party and get laid. We told him UC Santa Barbara. We didn't recommend Stanford. Also, he seemed to have warm feelings towards Americans. I wonder if Australia somehow maintained its respect for America after Bush trashed it pretty much internationally.

Anyways, the three of us slept an uneventful yet cozy night in Matt's two man tent and were woken up by the loudest and most myriad series of bird noises I've ever heard. It sounded as if huge flocks of birds were devouring flocks of other birds, all while trying to avoid hungry kangaroos and a fierce assault of drop bears. Apparently this is business as usual in this country.

So we packed up and headed to one of the free! activities on the island, the Conservation Hill Sanctuary. This park had several square miles of salt-water wetlands and played host to a bunch of birds and other living things part of the local ecosystem. Most peculiar were the Mangrove trees, which had pneumatophores, a bizarre adaptation where the trees had roots sticking straight out of the mud. These roots supposedly allowed the trees to "breathe" while submerged in high tide. We noticed that many of the trucks here have a similar adaptation.

since we're bad bloggers, we forgot to take a picture of the mangroves in the conservation park. instead, we've included a picture of some very confused mangrove trees in an inlet we found around sunset the first night.

A Toyota Hilux with a Pneumatophore

Anyways, on this same little hike we saw several wallabies and a very noisy parrot. Everything with wings wants attention in this country. Anyhow, we then tried to find the Koala preserve, realized that it would have cost money to see koalas, gave up, and went to the "Nobbies," to see a seal colony. What we saw there proved to be the highlight of the trip, but we didn't see any seals (their 3d-wireless-panoramic-amazement cameras were broken at the time). That being said, this conservation area (free?!?!?!?!) was home to an extraordinary seagull colony as well as some fairly spectacular views of the coastline. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves here, or, rather, I'll say that it was like a mountain had been covered with mother seagulls, each one nesting two feet away from another, with every male seagull noisily trying to defend its own territory. Parallels to suburban America aside, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:

moi. moi. moi moi moi. nemo anyone?

...giving babysitting a whole new meaning...

the elusive penguins. these required a short hike over wet, slippery rocks right on the edge of wet, slippery cliffs to find

And then Matt went swimming. Because he's hardcore like that.

After we all dried off, we drove into downtown Cowes, the largest town on the island, got some food, and drove back to Melbourne.  Also, Special thanks to our sponsor:

anyways, peace

-nathan

This is at the Nobbies. The editors regret the inclusion of such a cliche image, but hell, why not! On the left is Lucie, Matt is in the middle, and Nathan (blogger du jour) is on the right.

At first, when someone said that we needed SARS for the race, we instinctively reached for our Hello Kitty backpacks and felt around for our sterile facemasks.  Then,we made friends with a plumber.  Little did said plumber know that the 65 and up demographic has a 50% mortality rate, while our age group enjoys a mortality rate less than 1%.

Our plumber friend mostly told us about how he had designed rear seats for Ford Explorers.  His stories were voluminous, ranging from woman test drivers to something called a jubilee clamp.  While his presence was great, he distracted us from the task at hand, which was mathematics.  Nathan solicited Lucas, Marvin!, Lucy, and Matt to help him with the (not so) complex geometry of a right triangle, which proved to be useful as we created a monster--a polyvinyl chloride structure that we called SARS.

Everything Fits!

This structure is, simply stated, a one-axis solar tracker for the array of our solar car.  More specifically, it has approximately a 5 to 90 degree elevation range and should allow for simple adjustment and easy set-up and take down.  This means that during the race, we can tilt the top shell of our car towards the sun for more power generation when we are stopped.  These constraints led us to one thing: large diameter PVC.

Matt, Lucas, Daniel, and Nathan Assembling SARS

It started simply.  One of us coughed, and someone else contracted SARS.  Before long, most of the team was at some stage responsible for the spread of SARS to the Victoria Hall parking lot.  Terry, our plumber friend, was a-fixated on our SARS and felt the need to ward it off with incessant story-telling in a thick but surprisingly mumble-free Aussie accent.

Marvin! Degreasing/Priming the PVC

In between the stories, we (DC Posch, that is) managed to cut massive amounts of (not so) precision-cut piping.  Marvin was very skillful with a toothbrush at the task of degreasing and priming all of the joints. With the sheer strength of Lucas, our resident University of Kentucky Solar Car Team representative, we were able to attach these PVC pipes into a massive protein chain bent on destruction of many Asian countries in the year 2003.  After completing our masterpiece, we set out to celebrate at our gracious friends', the Tuckwells, who hosted Sasha and Ben before the rest of us arrived in this land.

There, we feasted on rare steak and avocado-themed salad, the former of which our vegatarian girls shied away from.  They were unaware that we had contracted SARS and that our celebration was in honor of SARS, and our general nerdy talk about SQUID's, the Czochralski process, and battery technology scared our gracious hosts away from the dinner table.  Thus ends the saga of SARS synthesis.

There were kangaroos, penguins, turtles, lions, giraffes, zebras, snakes, gators, and way too many other animals, so here's a condensed version of our trip.

One of the first, and by far the most awesome of the animals we saw, was the emperor tamarin. There were only two of them in the cage but they had enough energy to run the solar car across Australia. They would constantly leap around the branches in the cage and scramble across the fence for absolutely no reason. By the time your camera had focused they would be flying through the air. They are the ninja assassins of the animal world. To top it all off, they have beautiful white beards worthy of a Chinese martial arts master. In conclusion, TAMARIN!!!

TAMARIN!!!

None of the other animals were nearly as exciting. This giraffe's tongue came close to being as amazing, but the tamarin licked it in terms of sheer awesome.

slurp

The only animals that looked like they wanted to eat us were the little crocs and snakes in the reptile house, but it was more poison than actually eat. Other than that, the lions looked like they had the potential to eat us, but they were far too busy sleeping.

We didn't see any dropbears, but we found evidence of their existence in the aviary. Someone found this bird and brought it to the zoo to recover. As you can see, its head has been stolen by a dropbear. Poor, poor bird...

Victim of a drop bear attack

The Australian animals were actually very disappointing. They don't seem to understand the concept of predators. The koalas wedge themselves between tree branches and sleep...The kangaroos lie on the ground and sleep...Wombats climb into their holes and sleep...  Every animal was extremely lazy. Maybe the kangaroos were pretending to be roadkill to hide from predators. We've concluded that if we are being chased by a stampede of hoop snakes, the best strategy is to immediately fall asleep. Here are many sleeping Australian creatures, for your viewing pleasure.

naptime

zzz

Afterwards, we came back, had dinner on the way, and then had gellato! Mmm... We got to the hostel before the PVC pipe crew returned, but after they got back, Ben then ate a second dinner with them. Ben is a monster.

In other news, SARS has been completed*! Hooray!

great success

*by completed, i mean not completed

More animal photos in the gallery