Vist to St Johns and Preparing for scrutineering

Wed Oct 22.

This morning we visit St John's College this afternoon we will need to get the car ready for scrutineering. A few of us head out to Hidden Valley to do a little work on the car prior to taking it St John's for the visit, we are keen to get the telemetry going. When we get there we have forgotten the laptop with the Bluetooth dongle in it. I go back to get it. Fortunately peak hour traffic in Darwin is not so peak and I make the 15km round trip in good time.

When I get back the trailer is washed and the car is lined up with ramps I throw the Bluetooth to Doug and go about moving trailers to hook the Hilux onto the the solar car trailer. We check the lights and only the brake lights work, I fiddle with, pull plugs apart, check cable joins but still only brake lights. Ross arrives and we decide that he will follow the car and be our indicators. Radios allow us to tell Ross when we are changing lanes etc…

We get to St Johns and enjoy Morning tea and mingling with the student leadership team before meeting the rest of the school. Our students talk to theirs and we take a couple of them for a spin on their oval. I feel the morning has been a success and we head back to the track.

In the afternoon the team gets busy with the car, brakes are a concern and group work together to solve that problem. It seems joins in brake lines that were connected two years ago need to be revisited. Telemetry is now working, not sure why but Doug can't seem to break it so lets hope it works tomorrow. We apply mandatory stickers, check tyres, hook up head lights and collect and sort safety equipment. We go through a mental list with the team making sure we haven't forgotten any thing. In the evening we re-read the rules to make sure that we have not overlooked anything. I discover that the way I have set up the batteries for external charging contravenes one of the rules so I will have to change that first thing in the morning.

Hamburgers for Dinner, The patties made in the Girls room and I cook them in ours. Nuna have beaten us to the BBQ tonight. We beat them to it last night.

Scrutineering tomorrow 9:30am at Foskey Pavilion. Stay tuned.

John Beattie
Leeming Solar Car Team.