Wow what a dinner!

Tuesday Oct 20

We are all up at a reasonable time and I get the opportunity to speak to Eoin Cameron on Breakfast Radio in Perth. It's 7:45 here so I am on the radio at 6:15 at home. He has been a very keen supporter of our project and generally gives us a few calls during the challenge.

After breakfast the team heads out to the track to do a bit more work on the car, telemetry being the major thing we need to get sorted today. There are a lot more people at the track today and we have lots of visitors. Michigan come by and check out our car along with some one from Japan TV asking if they can take some video of us and ask some questions (we might be on TV in Japan). David Rand also drops by and we get a choice of time for scrutineering, 9:30 am Thursday.

Yesterday we got some software emailed from John Treen which allows us to monitor the current use, battery temp, cabin and motor temp and voltage amongst other things and after a cal to John at 9:00am 7:30 Perth time (sorry John) we get a small but vital piece of info and telemetry works. We then decide to move the position of telemetry system in the car to a safer location I am concerned that it might get bashed and broken when we are installing batteries.

We do this and head back to camp for lunch I go and get some supplies from Jaycar, amazingly the first trip to Jaycar whilst we've been here, in past years I would have been to Jaycar 10 times by now (that's not an exaggeration). I then go and pick up Morgan, Trent and Tom from the airport. Back to the Alatai for more lunch Morgan's hungry, surprise, surprise. After eating we head out to the track for more track testing.

We put batteries in the car and fire it up with the hope that we will be able to receive telemetry whilst we do a lap around the track but the telemetry won't work. The car side of things is okay and the laptop can see the car but we suspect Windows is and issue, Doug mumbles some words of the effect, "Bloody Windows Blah Blah Blah."

We manage a couple of laps without telemetry but rely on Tom to relay some numbers from the displays to get some idea of what's going on in the car.

Some of us stay till after 6 trying to solve the problem, Doug talks to John for quite some time trying to work it out, we try various reboots and different sequences, we try different laptops and many other options within the network software, but eventually we are beaten and we head home. I turn on to Tiger Brennan Drive and Doug asks if I turned the car off, I can't remember so we do a quick u turn and go back, the car was still on.

We get back to camp and James ahs been busy preparing tempura vegies and prawns. We also have some fish fillets Morgan crumbs them and I cook them on the BBQ. Dinner is sensational. James has out done himself and I suspect that we've probably had the best meal of the trip. James has worked like a trouper to get this meal prepared and then cooks it all. A huge effort. I ask James if he'd consider being a chef. No! is the answer.

Tomorrow we head off to St John's School to show of the solar car and get the car ready for scrutineering in the afternoon.

More updates to follow.

John Beattie
Leeming Solar Car Team.