Speeds - 2005

Nuna III
29:11 102.75 km/h average


Aurora
32:35 92.03 km/h average


Momentum
33:18 90.03 km/h average


Sky Ace Tiga
33:45 88.84 km/h average


Formosun 3
36:01 83.24 km/h average


Tesseract
40:00 74.95 km/h average


Apollo 5
40:15 74.49 km/h average


HansGo
41:05 72.99 km/h average


Sunswift
41:36 72.07 km/h average


Solution
44:06 67.99 km/h average


Soleon
47:15 63.46 km/h average


Umicar
48:04 62.37 km/h average


Kelly
49:13 60.92 km/h average


Aglaia
52:26 57.19 km/h average


Towards Tomorrow
55:54 53.64 km/h average


STUT
57:05 52.53 km/h average

Leeming Sungroper: Monday October 3rd: home

I wake; the sky outside the scout hall window is overcast. I suspect I'll be noticing the weather for quite some time to come.

We breakfast and pack. We also have to get rid of unused food, but luckily there are some circus people next door, who will see our surplus go to good use.

We peel the signage off our rental vehicles. Some are magnetic stickers, which are easy: lift 'em off and slap 'em on the inside of the Sungroper trailer. Some, like the stripy metallic hazard tape around the "Warning: Solar Car Ahead" sign are a right bastard; luckily, we have plenty of student labour to apply to the problem.

We cram everything into the Sungroper trailer and the support trailer, and set off to the city for lunch. We've packed the radios, which turns out to be a mistake: it's _much_ harder to coordinate three vehicles without them. Most of us go for food, while the vehicle I'm in goes to pick up a student's bag. He left it in Coober Pedy, and we got the backpacker's to put it on a bus to Adelaide for us. But it's a public holiday today in Adelaide, so we get the run-around. Eventually, we pick the bag up from the bus company's suburban depot, and return to the city centre.

John and Rodd take the trailers to the shipping company. The rest of us wander around for a while, then rendezvous at the appointed time at the Torrens parade ground. Raedthuys are there, getting their car into a suitable state for shipping. I have a nice chat with their strategist.

We drive to the airport and return the rental vehicles. According to the sign on the side of the terminal building, today we'll be flying Qantas. The team swells as we meet up with various parents, teachers, etc. We check in. (Tip for aspiring terrorists: you don't need to present photo ID if you're with a group booking.)

We take off in the late afternoon, and chase the sunset into the west. The sun finally vanishes during our descent into Perth, but it is not so much the sun setting from us, as us setting from it: we descend towards the Earth, and the horizon moves up and obscures the sun.

As the captain gives his "welcome to Perth" message, he congratulates the Leeming High team on their achievement. All cheer.

I go to Peter's place for a debriefing. Craig is in town for this week only, and since Peter and Craig are the two originators of the Sungroper project, it's too good an opportunity to miss.

Then home.

Sleep.

Finished.

-- Doug Burbidge

Leeming Sungroper: Sunday 2nd October: finish

We have a slow start to the morning. About half an hour from our planned departure time, we get word that the WSC people would like us earlier, so as not to interfere with the big finish for the World Solar Cycle Challenge, held concurrently with WSC, but over a different course. We roll.

There is some back-and-forth over the radio as to where various things are, who has moved John's jacket, etc. I realise that I've forgotten the pyrometer.

We reach the parade ground. It is disorganised. The logistics area is full of solar cycles, with no room for our vehicles. There is no WSC follow vehicle for the solar car, so we bring our own up. Then the WSC follow vehicle appears (albeit with no stickers, signage or rotating amber lights), so we have to put ours away again. Our solar car has to come up to the location of the bus with no follow at all, 100m along the road and through a traffic light; this is a contravention of our license.

I go in the follow vehicle; everybody else (apart from our solar driver) goes in the bus. We start solaring in, through city traffic, with traffic lights every 160 metres. There is no radio comms between the WSC follow and the bus, so I relay messages via my radio. The rest our crew keep the radio channel fairly quiet from their end so that I can talk our driver in. The lanes are narrower here in the city, and the traffic much more intense, but she manages well.

Just short of Victoria Square, the convoy splits: the bus and follow go into the slip lane at the left of the square, and Sungroper is waved forward and held just short of the finish line. We all leap out and rush across to the line. As I run, I can hear Onno on the wireless mike, working the crowd up to give us applause. Sungroper crosses the line; all cheer. I crawl under the car and check the motor: only 40 or 50 degrees. We gather around the tail of the car for a few minutes for a photo opportunity. Leeming High's principal is here, and she comes over and shakes the hands of team members. Parents of several students are here too, as are a couple of additional teachers.

A student says, "How good is Sungroper!", to general approval; this phrase will be repeated at random intervals by random students over the remainder of the trip.

I ask a couple of WSC officials what we are supposed to do with our car; we are directed to a scrutineering area off to the right. Chris Selwood comes over, shakes my hand, checks our battery seals and tags, cuts them off, and gives them to us as souvenirs.

We sign the car: John wipes the worst of the dust out of part of the tail, and we all take turns with a sharpie pen.

Again I look for an official to tell us where we're supposed to take our car next, but by the time I find one, the solar cycles are arriving, and cycles plus crowd have us hemmed in.

The cycle challenge involves partly pedal power, partly solar power, over a 1331 km course. The fastest average just under 40 km/h. Most are tricycles.

After they arrive, but before they do their presentations, we sneak our car out by moving a bunch of WSC fencing out of the way. We roll it into a vacant bay in one of the display tents. We hang out at the finish line long enough to cheer the French team, Jules Verne, as they come in, then take the bus back to the parade ground.

On the way back, we do our one junk food stop of the trip: lunch at a 1950s themed HJ's.

We return to the hall. A small crew goes to the coin-op laundry at the caravan park to wash the team shirts and other clothing for this evening. Around 4pm, another small crew goes to pick up Sungroper from Victoria Square.

In the evening is the closing ceremony at the State Theatre. In the lobby before we go in, and in the theatre before the event starts, we play the shirt trading game. Team members return to the group, displaying their trophies. One or two people get yellow observer shirts; about four get Nuna shirts. I contemplate the design of an ideal market for shirt trades, but decide that the problem is NP-complete. (This is a special mathematician's word which approximately means "hard".)

The closing ceremony is a closing ceremony; you know how they go. The last thing is the presentation of the first place trophy, which goes, of course, to Nuna. Nuna do a nice thing: they are wearing their shirt trades, so there are eleven different teams represented on stage, including Leeming Sungroper.

The post-awards drinkies thing this year is not a private function organised by WSC; it's just a designated pub. This is an issue for under-18 teams. We ask, and are let in, with all our under-18s wearing wrist tags; but other teams such as Kormilda and Annersley simply don't show.

I have a nice chat with Peter S, the course safety officer. Some of the ways he and I have been thinking to enhance safety turn out to be very similar.

We go to a kebab place up the road for food; the two guys behind the counter turn out a large number of kebabs for us in a very short time. Then we go back to the pub.

Sidd, our first observer, is there; a bunch of our students are on the dance floor, and I tell Sidd he should join them. Sidd tries to persuade me to dance too; bizarrely, he succeeds.

Eventually, John calls time, and at midnight we are back on the bus back to camp.

-- Doug Burbidge

Leeming Sungroper: Saturday 1st: 40 degrees in 10 minutes

There is no dawn underground. But we are not in a hurry to get going early. We do not bother setting out the array for dawn charge.

We trailer forward to the next checkpoint, Glendambo. While we serve our half hour, we are not allowed to work on the car, but Steve has already removed the chain tensioner from the car so that he can fix it with more steel wire. As we roll out for the checkpoint, we drag the chain in the dust.

Steve is very keen to get some more solar kilometres. I chat to a blue shirt at the checkpoint, and it seems that the road ahead will be flat, straight, with broad shoulders and little traffic for another 80km. We are unlikely to get better road for testing.

But we have not yet driven this car with this motor for more than three metres, and with the complete absence of telemetry, I am uneasy. We resolve to drive for five minutes, stop and measure the motor temperature with the pyrometer, drive for five, stop and measure, drive, measure, drive, measure, wash, rinse, repeat.

So we solar out from the checkpoint. Five minutes out or so, as we are looking for a good piece of shoulder to pull over onto, we reach a cattle grid. With our rear non-suspension, the grid is rough, and immediately after it, the driver hears a nasty clunk. He pulls over.

We push him off the road. The lead vehicle loops back to join us. Steve looks under the car for the source of the clunk, and I crawl under with the pyrometer (a nifty thermometer device) to measure the motor.

Temperatures on the bits of the motor I can reach range from 70 to 79 degrees C. That's more than 40 degrees rise since the checkpoint, in less than 10 minutes, and if it's that hot at the surface, you can bet that it's hotter on the inside.

We trailer.

We reach Port Augusta. It was our intention to skip this checkpoint, as we are allowed to skip one over the course of the race. We intended to merely stop in, tell them that we're skipping, so they don't have to hold it open just for us, and continue; but due to logistical complexities we wind up taking 30 minutes there anyway.

Onno phones me to see how we're doing, what the car is capable of, and generally if there's any way he can help us.

We reach Angle Vale, the end of timing, at 7:06pm. Normally, that would give us enough 2-for-1 penalty minutes to make us start the next day around noon, but since the only solar cars behind us on the course have also trailered, I think the race officials don't particularly mind about timing. Word comes that the race officials would like us to cross the line somewhere around 11am, give or take; we'll see what we can do.

John has had some difficulty finding accommodation that can take such a large number of people. Possibly this has something to do with the speedway a few k short of the end of timing, and the gajillion parked cars outside it, overflowed onto the sides of the road for over a kilometre.

But there's a caravan park just after the end of timing, and they rent us a building that looks like it used to be a scout hall. So we still need to set out all our bed rolls and such, but we don't need tents.

Now that we are returned to mobile connectivity, students scatter around the gravel lot out front of the hall, each finding a quiet corner to make phone calls. Some phones have flat batteries, and so their owners are tethered to power points inside the hall.

Dinner is piece meal: toast with egg, beans, barbecued potato, frozen curry barbecue-reheated.

Many people ask me if I am OK; I explain that I am just tired. Based on the number of enquiries, either I am substantially more tired than usual, or tonight's camp spot is better lit the last five.

Students horse around, give each other wedgies, throw a football, and invent a game involving a rubber ball and a row of thongs. (Note for foreigners: thongs are a form of footwear.)

We resolve that tomorrow we will trailer back to the end of timing, trailer forward to Torrens Parade Ground, a kilometre or so short of the finish line, and solar in from there.

-- Doug Burbidge

Greenfleet: It's a technology trial not a race.

The Greenfleet event is not a competition but provides an opportunity for manufacturers and others such as vehicle financing companies to show case their fuel efficient products. Even so, its interesting to watch the teams hang around the fuel pump as their perceived competition fills up. I noticed one team?a glint of delight when they realized that the team after them had used more fuel during the day, but their delight quickly faded when we reminded them that the second team had done a side trip to the Mattaranka Springs so litre for litre comparison did not makes sense. The fun continues.

Most of the teams are driving the cars to maximize fuel efficiency. This means they are traveling at between 70 -90 km per hour in zones where speed is unlimited. As a group traveling reasonably fast but just not fast by Northern Territory standards where speeds over 160km per hour are not unusual. The Northern Territory is the only state in Australia where these high speeds are tolerated without penalty so perhaps the slower speeds are more indicative of Australian conditions on the whole.

RBGAN Internet Cafe: Fri 30 Sept, Day 6 of race

Victoria Square: more cars rolling in today as well as a couple of green buses parked in the square (the Biodiesel and H2 Fuel Cell bus). The Solar cars are lined up and showing off all their glory. Definately worth a visit to come and see the latest technogy in action.

Leeming Sungroper: Friday 30th: litany

Around dawn, Steve reassembles the motor. But it still doesn't roll smoothly: the other bearing is stuffed, too. The first replacement bearing came out of our spare motor (the motor from the original Sungroper), but the spare has only one bearing this size, so we order new bearings from Coober Pedy, 150km south. The parents of one of the team members are in Coober Pedy, and they run the bearings up to us. An hour or two later, the parts arrive, and Steve fits them; but the motor is still not smooth: the drive shaft is bent.

How long has it been like this? We don't know. Possibly when the chain came off and locked the back wheel, the motor was put under undue strain, and the bearings toasted and the shaft bent then. Or possibly the motor was like this when it was delivered.

We push the car from where we're working on it back to the control stop, with only half the rear suspension connected because of the work we're doing. We serve our half hour, and push back. When we get there, and pop the array off, we discover that the half of the rear suspension we were using has not coped with the extra load, and is damaged.

In an attempt to get a working motor, we put the bearings back in the original Sungroper motor, solder on an additional plug so that we can connect it to the Tritium Gold Controller of Extreme Shinyness, fit a temperature sensor, and bolt it into the car.

When we test-run it, a nasty mechanical noise comes out of it, and we don't know why.

We pack, and trailer to Coober Pedy.

We roll out in the carpark of an underground backpacker's. Literally underground, of course, as this is the Coober Pedy style: a lot of housing and accommodation is simply tunnelled into the ground. This gives a nearly constant 27 degrees C all year round.

But not so in the carpark, blasted by wind which deposits a patina of red dust on everything, including the array. We clean the array with the last of our rain water. After we finish, it's still dirty, but it doesn't matter: if I push the whole power of the array into the batteries, two thirds of the battery pack heats up, one third dangerously so. So I turn on just one of the four array strings, to feed the batteries quarter power.

As we trailered to Coober Pedy, we had the back wheel hooked up to the remaining half of its suspension. When we roll out, we discover that this too has failed under the doubled load.

We acquire a crowd, several of whom are quite helpful.

John notices that we don't have any dash displays, despite 12V being turned on. We've not getting any telemetry either. I poke around with the multimeter, and discover that the 5V regulator, which is supposed to take 12V and cut it down to size for our 5V electronics, is not working. I replace it with one salvaged from another piece of gear. Now 5V works, but still almost none of the electronics that depends upon it is working. Andrew's +4 Voltage Sense Board of Rapid Prototyping is working, but nothing else. I swap in the master board chip from the original Sungroper, and now I get telemetry, but all the numbers are zero: every microcontroller chip in the car that takes that 5V and feeds data back to the master board has been zapped, presumably by the same thing that destroyed the 5V regulator.

(Note for geeks: I'm using a 7805 for 5V, instead of the TEM-1211 DC-to-DC converter used in Sungroper 1. This is because the TEM-1211 is now very rare and hard to buy, and no pin-for-pin replacement is available. A search on Google within Australia for TEM-1211 turns up exactly one hit: the Sungroper website. This means we do not have the isolation that the TEM-1211 would have provided. But I still have no idea how the boards got zapped.)

Steve fixes the rear suspension by removing it, and bolting the arms that used to go to it directly to the frame of the car. To provide some smoothness of ride, he decreases the pressure in the rear tyre.

John, Steve, and the audience look at the problem with the original Sungroper motor, and decide that it is a problem with the keyway. This is a slot in the shaft: when the sprocket slides on, it is this keyway that forces the sprocket to turn in time with the shaft. But it is loose, which will cause rapidly destructive wear. Options are discussed, and a solution involving glue is decided upon.

John takes the car for a short drive in the carpark to test the new non-suspension. Three metres in, the chain tensioner breaks again, and the chain falls off.

So one motor has a bent shaft, the other has a dodgy keyway, the tensioner is broken, the rear suspension is non-existent, the batteries won't charge, the array is red with dust, the electronics are all toast.

But the Tritium controller still works.

We go for pizza; John lays down the conservative strategy he intends to use: trailer to a few k short of the finish, set down, and solar across the line.

-- Doug Burbidge

Greenfleet: Greenfleet Class show cases fuel efficient technology and low carbon fuels

The Greenfleet event showcases emerging and fuel efficient technology for cars. We monitor each vehicle?s fuel consumption between Darwin and Adelaide being a journey of nearly 3,500 km.

The Greenfleet class has a range of vehicles entered which include hybrid petrol engines, Honda Insight and Honda Civic Hybrid, diesels, Smart Car (2 seater), Peugot 307 (1.6L) and a Holden Astra, a conventional petrol engine Mitsuibishi Colt, a Toyota Landcruiser running on biodiesel made from Canola Oil, a 1925 Austin running on ethanol produced from sugar cane and last but not least, an electric car entered by the Anesley College.

Each day we refuel each car and monitor the kilometers and the distance traveled. After each refueling we seal the tanks with security tape. Its very tricky tape which leaves a nasty ?security? print on the car when its removed. What is important for this class is the average fuel consumption over the journey not who gets there fastest. Its not a race.

Soleon: September 29th - Late Night, 100km North of Port Augusta, South Australia

The excitement is building as we not only put another half an hour cushion between ourselves and Kelly, for a total of about an hour, we gained half an hour on the team in front of us, Umicore, from Belgium. With nothing more than a few insignificant smatterings of cloud, we had an ideal day of sunshine to plough ahead.

The morning started off with a little birthday breakfast for BJ, French toast and bacon. Although he is 21 in Australia, we had a little discussion as to whether he wanted to celebrate on Aussie or Canadian time, we settled for both. To follow up, BJ found a few extra treats in his lunch cooler and we fired up Jonathan?s Pizzaria once again for dinner, a BJ, and team, favorite. I had hoped to grant his first wish of rack of lamb, but our cooking facilities make that dish a gamble. We ended the night sitting around a roaring campfire, under a starry sky, eating birthday cake.

The morning drive was once again flat, red, and open, a Martian Saskatchewan. At some points the trees disappeared outright, exposing the vastness of the terrain around us. Once again, the strong wind gusts cut through the stillness of the Outback, jostling all our vehicles around.

As we approached Coober Pedy, we came upon the first signs of the extensive Opal mining that goes on in the area. Mounds of rock and dirt popped up on the horizon, small at first like desert moguls, later growing to every imaginable size, some as large as buildings. Some were as white as snow, beautifully contrasting the crimson sun baked ground. Coober Pedy boasts their unique, underground hotel rooms, which we can only imagine as we did not have the opportunity to stay in one.

We reached our checkpoint at Glendambo by mid-afternoon and after our mandatory wait, we raced on. Using our WSC route book, we aimed for a rest stop as a safe place to set up camp for the night; we hit it at five o'clock on the nose. We're now in a region dominated by huge lakebeds, all with various amounts of water, some with none at all. BJ and Jonathan paused at one, Lake Hart, and were told by some of the locals that we were lucky to have seen it full of water since it apparently only fills up every fifty years or so. We'll take it as a good omen and a reflection of how full our own hearts are after this awesome experience.

Spirits are so high right now it's hard to describe. Garett and Colby took the car further down the race route to scout out the Belgian team. We were ecstatic to learn that we are only 16 and a half (yes, we're counting down to the meter) kilometers behind them. With only about 400km to go to the finish line we are all hungry to overtake one more team and make the top ten.

Going into our third day traveling through Southern Australia you can see how the Southern Australian portion of the Stuart highway has taken on a distinct, reddish hue, it's like they rolled out the red carpet to signal our arrival. I can assure everyone that if we continue to perform as we have been, even though we will be arriving without having showered, finishing this race will leave us all feeling like a million bucks, worthy of a red carpet welcome!

Aussie phrase of the day "The race was heaps fun?" Translation: "The race was a lot of fun?".

Laurie Heilman Bell MASc. Communications Manager/Nutritional Advisor University of Calgary Team Soleon

Aurora: 29 September, Day 5

We had a meal at local pub, and spent the night in cabins at a nearby caravan park, out of the cold weather.

At 6:00, we were back at the finish of timing, charging the car for the final drive into the centre of Adelaide.

We are in no particular hurry now. We left the finish of timing at about 8:30, and drove the final 20km into the city.

About a kilometre from Victoria Square we parked our support vehicles and piled into the WSC bus, which led the solar car to the finish line. The new finish procedure worked well---the entire team were together as we crossed the line, where we were cheered in by a large crowd (mainly Dutch!)

We will be in Victoria Square until Sunday afternoon. If you are in Adelaide, come and see us.

RBGAN Internet Cafe: Thurs 29 Sept, Day 5 of race

Here we are in Victoria Square and the Aurora team have just crossed the finish line - go you Aussies! Chatted to the Aurora team manager who mentioned what a great difference it made being able to use the rbgan for communications whilst on route.

Whilst in the past he would dictate his team reports to a colleague via telephone, this year, with the aid of the rbgan terminal, they were able to upload reports directly to the web, check emails and even web-surf right in the middle of the desert. Revolutionary!

Leeming Sungroper: Thursday 29th: to Cadney

Again I am not on dawn array duty; again this is a Good Thing. Several students and a couple of teachers climb the hill again. We trailer out of the caravan park about 40 minutes after the official 8am start time. We set down a couple of hundred kilometres further down the track, and solar. We have a tail wind again, and patchy cloud again, but today the clouds are much smaller, and are whipping past us at much faster than our 32 km/h road speed: we are being overtaken by the clouds.

We solar past a Telstra repeater station. These small huts occur every couple of hundred kilometres along the highway; each is a smallish hut with two big masts of solar panels outside. The panels power the optic fibre repeaters, which listen for a weak pulse coming in on one optic fibre, amplify it, and push the message along -- light driving light through an underground network crossing the continent.

As we pull in to a bay beside the road for a driver change, the temperature alarm goes off -- again the motor is overheating. We elect to trailer for a little while so that the motor can cool down. While trailering, the mech team in the lead vehicle design some additional cooling cowling for the motor. We set down at Kulgara roadhouse, pop the top, gaffer-tape some cardboard in strategic spots around the fan and motor, and solar on. We solar across the Northern Territory / South Australia border. Our doco team have lined up a bunch of tourists at the border monument to cheer us on as we pass.

A few kilometres further, on a long slow uphill, the temperature alarm goes off again. This section of the road is elevated above the plain, presumably for resistance to flooding, so there's just barely room to pull off. We put a student out the back of our convoy with the red flag, and largely stay in our vehicles 'til the temperature alarm shuts up. Then we solar a couple more k to a rest stop and charge for half an hour. The support bus catches up -- they've been slowed down by a blown tyre. We trailer to Cadney roadhouse. 98 solar kilometres for the day.

We arrive at the Cadney checkpoint at 5:02pm, so we'll serve our 30 minute stopover from 8:02am to 8:32am tomorrow.

Steve floats the idea of fitting a 19-tooth sprocket to the motor, in place of the 15-tooth we've got there now. We've got no more big hills to climb, so I can't argue against it. He jacks up the back wheel and pops the chain off. Then he discovers that the back wheel doesn't roll freely: the rear brake is dragging. It was too small an amount to notice with the car jacked and the chain on, and too small to notice when rolling the car forward and back by hand. Steve adjusts the brake. With the chain back on, there's a funny noise coming from the motor. Steve finds a bolt rubbing very slightly against the motor fan cowling. He spaces it off. Better, but still a funny noise. He opens the motor, and finds a bad bearing.

Then it's a long slow disassemble of the motor into an ever increasing number of pieces, in fading light, in the gravel carpark of a truck stop in the middle of nowhere. Steve puts the new bearing in, but on reassembly discovers that he has one piece left over. There is a word for this phenomenon in Liff, I am sure.

We elect to put the piece back into the motor in the morning.

The evening is cold, and for the first time our team jackets come in handy. Dinner is chicken satay sticks plus vegie and mash, in our circle of chairs. The circle is getting slightly bigger as the days go by: we now have three sets of parents of students following us more or less closely as we journey: travelling off to do touristy things by themselves, and occasionally rejoining camp to see how their progeny are doing.

-- Doug Burbidge

Leeming Sungroper: Friday, 29th: SMS Update

Doug sends:

Cadney overnight. Motor bearing bad. Put in new bearings; motor shaft bent. Put in Sungroper 1 motor: bad also. Trailering to Coober Pedy

Presumably they will have a better chance to do something in Coober Pedy.

Peter.

Greenfleet: Coming to the Alice?..

The Greenfleet Class of vehicles traveled down to Alice Springs today. Most of the teams left Tennant Creek by 8.30am and took advantage of a stop off at the ?Devil?s Marbles?. A mystical grouping of large boulders lying literally like a pile of massive marbles. I could spend all day there and I truly struggle to return to the car to make it to the next stop for refueling. It doesn?t seem fair to be so close to so many wonderful sights and not have sufficient time to do them real justice but onto the Alice we went.

Alice Springs is known as the dead heart of Australia but it seems alive and kicking to me ? shopping malls, new hotels and even a casino. Alice Springs is set between the outcrops of rock know as the MacDonald Ranges. Its difficult to describe how beautiful this town is. The rocky outcrops which run oranges and reds are lined by white barked ghost gums and set against a sky so blue it must have a lens filter on it. The soil out here is a magnificent red, deep rich luminous earthy red. I never become tired of being in this part of the country; it?s too spectacular.

At the end of each day we attend a community event: sausage sizzle and cold drinks. Today the cars were parked in the city?s Todd Mall and it was great to mix with the locals and to see their interest in the cars. I find great enjoyment dispelling mistaken beliefs about these cars. ?How often do you have to plug the hybrid to recharge it?? is a particular favourite. It seems that there is a much work to be done when it comes to the average person?s understanding of alternatives to the fuel guzzling petrol engine.

Soleon: September 28th - Late Night, Cadney Homestead, South Australia

Mission accomplished! We managed to overtake Team Kelly today, the production class leader, and reigning production class champion from the 2003 WSC. By the end of the day we had put 20 minutes between us, a margin we hope to increase tomorrow.

We started the day right on time at 8:06 a.m. in 2nd place. Team Kelly, out of Adelaide, led us by 50 minutes, while AGU from Japan, trailed us by 10 minutes. Within 2 hours, we had passed Kelly, thus gaining first place. At noon, the driver was replaced, Colby taking over for Kyle, and shortly after, the rear tire blew. During the change, which took about 6 minutes, Kelly passed us and the race was on. Within 1 hour, we had passed Kelly again, and did not see them again until the mandatory control point stop of Cadney Homestead. The AGU team stopped about 80 km before the control point, which translates to about 1 � hours of driving time.

Anything can happen as there are still at least 2 days left in the race, but we are confident that we stay competitive. Since Nuna completed the race today, in a record breaking time of just over 29 hours, our focus is on the production class prize.

The greatest challenge of the day was the intense wind. We passed through some very open terrain today so there was nothing to shield us from the strong gusts. The wind was strong enough to flatten the bottoms of the billowing clouds like a spatula over mashed potatoes, paralleling the cloud bottoms with the flat terrain. Visiting with Kelly at the end of the day, we learned their right wheel actually became airborne twice when meeting with two of the stronger gusts. Fortunately for us, the wind only managed to fan the fire of our motivation to win.

Jonathan, our team photographer, had a less fortunate day as the backpack he had strapped to the back of the truck came loose and was dragged for a few minutes, totaling and/or scattering much of what was inside. The only blessing was that his camera equipment was safely stored in the cab of the truck. We have begun to piece together what we can to replace what he lost, but there are a few items that the Outback, and our team, just don?t have on hand.

As I write this, Colby and I are scouring the Stuart Highway in search of Kangaroos as we?re running out of time, and Outback, to find one. To date, the only ones we have seen have been the plush versions you find in gift shops and the dead ones on the side of the road. Even the dead ones are becoming a rare site as Team Nuon (Nuna) had a car assigned to clearing road kill from the race route to ensure their safe passage. We are now returning unsuccessful, but it would be difficult to dampen our spirits today!

Aussie phrase of the day: ?He went out into the mulga to look for some roos.? Translation: ?He went out into the Outback looking for some kangaroos.?

Laurie Heilman Bell MASc. Communications Manager/Nutritional Advisor University of Calgary Team Soleon

Aurora: 28 September, Day 4

Sunrise. The sky is covered in clouds, and there is a strong wind from the southwest. The entire team is at the array stand holding down the array.

The sun occasionally comes out from behind the clouds, giving us a few minutes of bright sunlight.

It is raining.

We got very little charge again this morning. Our batteries are 35% full, but the sky is completely overcast and there is a very strong headwind. We set off at 80km/h.

At 0840, we have the windscreen wipers on in the lead car. We are getting only occasional patches of sunlight. But it is clearing out to the west.

We arrived at the Glendambo control point at 9:06, about 8 minutes ahead of Michigan. TIGA are nowhere in sight.

The cloud front is running parallel to the road. Five minutes out of Glendambo, we crossed onto the sunny side. We are getting about 10% more power than we expect because of reflection from the edges of the clouds.

By 10:10, we were back under the cloud.

Michigan overtook us at about 11:30. Shortly afterwards, we both came out of the clouds into bright sunlight.

We are sitting right behind Michigan, doing about 85km/h. Our battery level is slowly increasing above our planned discharge profile.

We pulled into Port Augusta just behind Michigan. TIGA was not far behind.

Michigan had to do some work on their car (remove a chunk of metal wedged in the front), so we left 30 seconds before them.

Michigan overtook us at 14:55. We are now sitting behind Michigan, to see who's battery will die first. The sky is still cloudy.

In the most exciting and stressful leg of the race, Todd has fallen asleep in the lead car.

At 15:20, Michelin slowed to 75km/h. This is good---our battery charge is dropping a little too fast.

It is raining, and very windy.

Nuna has passed the finish of timing, with an average speed of 102km/h.

At 15:50, Michigan pulled over with a flat tyre. We continued in the rain at 60km/h.

After Port Wakefield, we decided that we could safely increase our speed---if the battery voltage started dropping, we would still have enough energy in the battery to limp to the finish line. We sped up to 105km/h. The battery voltage did not drop until 10km north of the finish of timing. We crossed the finish of timing at 17:05.

If Michigan or TIGA cannot get to the finish line before 8:05, we will be second.

We have been told that Michigan is at Port Wakefield, and TIGA is 25km further north. Second again!

RBGAN Internet Cafe: Wed 28 Sept, Day 4 of race

We have now set up camp in Victoria Square, Adelaide and have witnessed a very happy Nuon team cross the finish line to a sea of orange cheering supporters. We'll be here till Sunday so drop in and visit - we are just near the Panasonic cafe. Bye for now! Diana Minglis Marketing manager

Leeming Sungroper: Wednesday 28th: cloud

We pack the camp. This is made more challenging by the wind, which tends to blow the tents onto the barbed wire fence. We roll the car into the trailer, and trailer towards Alice Springs. We set down and solar. Today's solaring is made more challenging by the presence of cloud: there is maybe 80% cloud cover. On the other hand, we do have a strong tail wind. We solar along, drawing power out of the pack to get through the cloud. Then the temperature alarm goes off. We pull over and try to figure out why the motor is so hot. We look, but nothing seems out of place. We solar on a little, and the alarm goes off again. We take the array off again, but still everything seems unchanged from yesterday. Eventually, we figure it out: we've moving at about 35 km/h, and the tail wind is about 35 km/h. This means that our cooling fan, blowing air over the motor, is inadequate by itself, and we need extra airflow to keep the motor cool. We improvise a shroud with polycarb and gaffer tape, to focus the airflow from the fan. This time, the temperature stays around 55 degrees.

We solar on through patchy sun to Alice Springs. We successfully solar through town, through four traffic lights, through the Heavitree Gap, and in to the checkpoint. Then, out of the 30 minutes we are required to stop at the checkpoint, I spend 40 of them trying to figure out why telemetry has been down for the past two hours. It turns out that two of the three cigarette lighters in the Landcruiser have blown fuses, as has one of the cigarette lighter double adapters, plus the 9V battery I'm using to run the telemetry receiver in the absence of 12V is now flat, plus Pyustration has crashed. I'm leaning more and more towards thinking that 12V is a fundamentally bad way to pipe power around - if I were scratch-designing a production car, I'd be tempted to go 110V or 240V, and invert that down to lower voltages where necessary.

We solar out of the checkpoint and take the right turn that continues us down the Stuart Highway, but soon decide that in the absence of sun, we're only going to be able to go a trivial distance. We call it a wrap, our new observer (hi, Peter!) spraypaints the road, and we bring the trailer around.

And then of course the sun comes out. But our decision is still valid: cloud cover is still about 80%, and any given patch of sun doesn't last long. So we return to camp, a caravan park not far from the checkpoint. It's only 4pm, so we set the array up to get some sun. 107 solar kilometres for the day, despite the cloud.

-- Doug Burbidge

Addedum:

Wednesday PM:

The Mac Donnell Ranges caravan park is very nice. Several students climb one of the large hills behind the caravan park; these presumably are the Mac Donnell Range. Word comes that Nuna have won the race, beating their previous record and averaging 103 km/h, despite having to obey all speed limit signs. In the evening, there is a live performance by a local singer; our cameraman gets up and plays wobble-board on one song. We all cheer him on.

Greenfleet: This is a great to to start

Hi

I am sitting in the car park at Aileron which is 140km north of th Alice. This is my first go at a real remote office. We always laugh at work that the local cafe where we hold meetings with coffee is the local remote office but it has nothing on this. Our group has stopped for a photo opportunity for the local media and I am causing a sensation with this technology. Its fantastic!

The teams are all going really well. A couple of hiccups with support vehicles and one car overdid the speed (real speed) on the highway and their fuel consumption reduced to a normal car - hence the problem. But its all fun.

Soleon: September 27th - Late Night, South of Alice Springs, Northern Territory

Today was a magnificent day for both racing and site-seeing, it was a goosebump worthy despite the heat. There was barely a cloud in the sky and without a single breakdown we managed to pass the Japanese team! Kudos goes to Ryan and Shawn as they appear to have worked out the electrical bugs that have been plaguing us like the Aussie flies! We are now trailing Kelly (the Southern Australian team leading our class) by 50 minutes. With half of race left, catching up is not an impossible task, more a motivating challenge.

We passed the much talked about Devil's Marbles early today. These enormous red boulders are believed by the aborigines to be the eggs of the Rainbow Serpent and the site is regarded as highly spiritual place to visit in dreams. To others, the marbles are a marvel of Mother Nature and a natural playground fit for all ages. As I climbed to the top of a "marble" pile and peered out across the Outback I understood the aboriginal perspective; I certainly do hope to visit them again in my dreams.

As we moved further south, the termite mounds (which may in fact be petrified ant hills as I learned from a souvenir fridge magnet) have begun to diminish in size. They now crop up like primitive headstones in some forgotten cemetery. Most striking along this current stretch, is the intensity of the red soil. At some points you could see for miles, perched atop the red soil like an endless terra cotta rooftop, the view only broken up by trees that looked as though they were hand picked from an Ansel Adams photograph collection.

Driving through Alice Springs was another breath-taking experience as the flat landscape opened up into valleys. The hills surrounding the area are quite unique, looking more like giant piles of red rocks. After making it through the Alice Springs checkpoint with minutes to spare, we pushed as far as we could, ending about 10km outside of Alice Springs. We quickly fired up our mobile kitchen and made personal pizzas in Chef Jonathan's Pizzeria. Jonathan has been a wonderful help in the "kitchen" on several occasions, proving he is as much a culinary artist as a photographic artist.

After dinner we took turns checking our email, using up the battery power on a couple of laptops. Every morning BJ sets up an internet cafe of sorts in the cab of our truck, although there's usually too much going on for all of us to cycle through it. The evening edition of his internet cafe gave a number of us a much needed chance to briefly connect with family and friends. Kyle, Travis and Ryan were fortunate to receive a lesson in astronomy and navigation as they sat out under a blanket of stars with our newest observer, Peter, a seasoned Outback and WSC adventurer.

It's great to watch the team in such high spirits and working together. Although there was a little concern that we were not bringing enough people on this race, our numbers seem to be just perfect as no one is too overworked or standing around idle. We certainly step on each others toes at times, but that's all part of being a family in the home away from home we have created out here in the Outback.

Aussie phrase of the day: "Ta" Translation: "Thanks" or an affirmative acknowledgment of something, often heard when you hand something to an Aussie. I thought this was an appropriate choice as I feel I was handed a great deal in the Outback today.

Laurie Heilman Bell MASc. Communications Manager/Nutritional Advisor University of Calgary Team Soleon