The Challenge: Design and build a car capable of crossing the vast and imposing continent of Australia using only sunlight as fuel and to prove it, in the spirit of friendly competition against others with the same goal. This BLOG updates as teams publish their contributions around the world.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
SolarFox: Third day's racing
Day three was the start of further rough weather and this time we were in the middle of it. 30km/h head winds, low cloud and showers reduced our average speed and made driving tricky. At crusing speed, roughly 60-70% of the total resistance to SolarFox's forward motion is aerodynamic drag and so a headwind of 30km/h can drop the cruise speed by around 20km/h, which is very significant. As a result, we didn't manage to cover as much ground as on previous days. However, we reached the control stop at Tennant Creek 987km from Darwin and a third of the way to Adelaide, at 13:20 and made further progress that afternoon to eventually stop to camp at Wycliffe Well for a night in the jungle.