For us, I suppose, the race began the day it sank in that we would be able to get to Australia. For a while it was uncertain, and that uncertainty lost us a few good teammates. But once we realised we were going to make it – that’s when it started for us.

Officially, however, it started on Sunday 16^th October 2011 and ended a week later, and that’s all most people see. That’s where the focus is, and the detail around the edges is lost. But detail is important. Look past the media reports, flashy videos and posed photos – you will see another world. In this world, details matter. Tiny details, like what currency your shipping company wants to be paid in, or what number you have to dial at what time in what time zone to actually connect to a human being at British Airways to complain about lost baggage.

In this world, everyone has details. Maybe it isn’t your stickers stranded in a foreign airport, but your battery, as happened with MIT. Make a small error on your customs documents and your battery (and motor controller!) may arrive safely but never be released to you: as Solaris, the team from Delhi, learned.

It’s the small details that end the race. So Solaris worked day and night to rewire their car to accept store-bought batteries, and cobbled together a substitute motor controller to get themselves back on the road (hence the rumours that they were actually living full-time in their crate). Michigan stepped in to donate spare cells to MIT, who then spent several nights building a new battery pack instead of sleeping.

A big part of the race is just making it through scrutineering, which, thankfully, we all did. Out here, it’s not just a challenge to cross the finish line, it’s a challenge to cross the start line. And it’s a proud moment. I will remember the  brass band playing outside Government House in Darwin, as teams are sent off with a wave of the NT state flag: Chile, Germany, the Philippines, Taiwan, Singapore, Turkey, Canada, Holland, Japan, Italy, Australia, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Belgium, the US, the UK…it reminds you that all over the world are people like you, who care about this enough to put in two years’ work and to struggle through every kilometre of the 3000 that make up the distance. You feel proud.

Strangely enough, it’s not always the successes that make me feel proud: sometimes it’s the failures; the struggles. This was my second WSC and I have seen so much go wrong. For Twente, arriving in 2011 with a bold and beautiful design and taking pole position at the start, to break down only 10 minutes out of Darwin was a blow. It takes a slick team to assess and solve the problem as quickly as they did, and make up their lost time. On the first day we passed several early casualties, among them MIT, who had suffered a tyre failure. Their solid tyres were intended to be a boost to performance but instead broke into pieces not far along the road. And of course our own issues cropped up with the steering wheel: ten minutes before you’re about to start your first driving shift, the last words you want to hear are “I’ve lost power”. Although to be fair, Alisdair’s follow-up wasn’t much better: “We’ve found a way to drive the car…but you’re not going to like it”.

As it turned out, two steering wheels are only better than one if one is broken. And even then it’s a close thing.

However, having been stuck at the side of the road outside Katherine for much longer in 2009, this was a great improvement and we were keen to push on. Other teams had even bigger setbacks: Solaris fell foul of the winds that destroyed Umicore in 2009, and lost both their canopy and a panel from their array.

So the long, hot days went on: at each control stop we rushed to look at the leaderboard to see if there was anything unexpected – good or bad. Most of the time it was unchanged: Tokai, Nuon and Michigan leading, with the only drama derived from working out how close together they were. Nuon gaining 4 minutes on Tokai; Michigan dropping an hour behind! More exciting was the performance of the Ashiya team from Japan who over the course of three days pushed their way past Apollo, Aurora and Twente into 4^th place. More shocking was passing Apollo on the side of the road outside Tennant Creek, where they had hit a cattle grid too hard and destroyed their suspension. More amazing that they had it fixed within four hours and were rushing to get back their position.

Of course, the landscape was slightly less benign than usual, having caught fire, and the hold-up at Tennant Creek caused its own problems. The Philippine battery went the way of the rest of the bush and incinerated itself. That they managed to continue racing is incredible and speaks to the wisdom of having all teams submit detailed safety and chemical contingency plans before racing. It also speaks to the skill of their engineers, who must have had an immense job checking the electrical systems and installing the new battery. The replacement of so many cells also incurred a massive time penalty.

As the haze from the bushfires began to blur out the sun, many teams struggled to drive and were forced back on to their trailers. We were lucky, but only until Ti Tree, where the battery went on the blink again. The next day, it was the turn of the radios as my microphone decided to switch itself permanently on, blotting out all other communication with its scratchy noise. It was definitely a sight to watch the chase car pull alongside Endeavour with a huge sign reading CHECK MIC!! It was also a bit of a struggle trying to fix my own radio inside a slightly wobbly solar car without veering in front of anything, but eventually I disconnected the handsfree kit and wedged the radio into my helmet strap. Fun times. I was glad of a break as I pulled into the Kulgera control stop, and fell asleep until I woke up in South Australia and it was raining. You all know what happened.

On the last day Alisdair’s stubbornness apparently won over meteorology, and we had a patch of clear sky that we shared with MIT and Eclipse, huddled together in a remote parking lot in the Painted Desert. All three teams shared their stories of the race as one lone Montreal guitarist sat on his trailer and sang songs about their journey across the continent.

As we reached Adelaide, more stories began to filter in. Umicore had worked their way past Ashiya and Twente only for their battery pack to catch fire, two hundred kilometres from the end of the race. Undaunted, they waited until they were declared safe to race and then pushed on, their driver jumping in the car straight out of hospital where he had been treated for smoke inhalation.

We crossed the finish line on the last day, and we watched as the last few teams followed us into Victoria Square to have their moment in the fountain. That night, at the awards ceremony, the usual speech was given, lauding all participants in the event, who made the journey across the continent. And yet, when we went back into the world, and looked at the publicity, and the media, and the promotional videos – it was all about the top three. And it was a shame, because I realised that this race above all others is not about the teams that win: it’s about the teams that don’t.

It’s about the teams who build a car with a budget of US$10,000, lose their battery and motor controller and yet are dedicated enough to get up and running nonetheless. It’s about the teams who fight for fourth place, behind the impossible-to-reach Big Three.  It’s about the teams who catch fire and still keep going. It’s about the teams who eat away slowly but surely at each kilometre, who know before they start that they will never finish but try anyway. It’s about the teams who don’t see an eighteen-month sabbatical as a sacrifice, but as a luxury.

The World Solar Challenge is full of untold, unheard stories, dissolved in the unseen details. Behind the high tech, high performance, glistening exterior of the best teams is another world, and a different adventure: one that is incredible not because it is easy, but because it is hard. That is the adventure that I will remember: frozen in the image of a solar car crawling along the Stuart Highway at 30 kph, refusing to give up, while all around it, rain falls in the desert.

The most frustrating thing for a group of enthusiastic engineers is to have their efforts and aspirations thwarted by bureaucracy. But that’s exactly what happened when our shipping company refused to give us our container or even accept any form of payment. We spent an unproductive and relaxing two weeks in Darwin without a car to work on. However, what we achieved in the following fortnight after we finally got our hands on the car cannot be overstated. The car arrived in a “working” condition (we’d done some driving back in the UK at Bourn Airfield) but getting the vehicle race-ready took a huge amount of proverbial elbow grease and midnight oil.

We successfully fitted new lights and LED drivers, tested new driver controls and telemetry, performed solar battery charging tests and re-wired a few things that we’d never got around to in the UK, including the rear-view camera. The mechanical guys chipped in with a new set of wheels, worked out how to fit the Michelin tyres (and then taught a couple of other teams how to do the same) and fitted a brand new canopy. We painted the car and stickered her up with new sponsor logos, after BA successfully lost our first logos package somewhere between the UK and Sydney.

We always knew that testing was going to be critical to race success and not having the car for two weeks effectively robbed us of two weeks’ testing time. Despite this, we spent a couple of days out on the Cox Peninsula road just driving and practising convoy communications. I like to think of testing as deliberately causing problems so that they won’t happen when it actually matters. Pretty much anything that can go wrong in a solar car at some point will, and of all the things that can go wrong, the majority are electrical. The main problem that we “caused” during this testing period was battery related. One of our 5 Cell Management Modules (CMMs) decided to fail in a short-circuit state. These boards had until this point been doing a stellar job of keeping all 80 cells nicely balanced, but this fault destroyed two cells (and their two replacements) and meant we had to replace the CMM. Fortunately we’d brought two spare CMMs with us, unfortunately one of them didn’t work, and the other had an ID that conflicted with one that was still working. Some epic software bodging by “Batt-man” Ed meant we found a working solution. The CMM boards later threw regular over temperature faults and started physically shedding capacitors at an alarming rate. We fixed these problems as they appeared, but were nevertheless quite frustrated by such issues on supposedly reliable hardware. When you build a car, you half expect your home-made components to go wrong, not the stuff built by professionals.

We began the race quietly optimistic that we’d (perhaps) finish the 3000km on solar power. The first day we started fairly low on the grid after putting in a (sensibly) cautious qualifying lap at Hidden Valley due to concerns about the suspension and the new wheels. But when you’re not competing for the top 5 positions, grid position is relatively unimportant in a 3000km endurance race. We got off to a flying start and overtook the usual first hour breakdowns on the way out of Darwin. We had an exciting but (thankfully) uneventful few hours driving. The inevitable first problem occurred when the driver controls stopped functioning. It took the best part of an hour to work out where the problem was and find a solution. We fell back on an earlier version of the controls and carried on driving. Later inspection of the circuit would reveal that an inductor in the power supply had come loose causing total power loss to the steering wheel. The result of this fault was that we were behind our ideal race pace and would struggle to make Katherine (the first control stop) in time. What we failed to realise was that this was not critical and that we could have missed this control stop and perhaps adjusted our strategy accordingly for the following day. Instead we made the mistake of thrashing our car a bit too hard, driving at 20kph faster than we realistically could sustain. We ended up with what we assumed was a flat battery and were forced to trailer.

Another problem also contributed to our first day disappointment. Our telemetry system failed due to a blown fuse in the chase car’s 12V system. Another case of off-the-shelf components failing and lack of testing left us without good battery data while we drained a bit too much juice. As it turned out, the battery wasn’t completely drained, but one or two overly-discharged cells had triggered Low Voltage Protection (LVP). This fault was quite possibly a result of having to replace cells before the race because of the aforementioned CMM short-circuit issue. When a battery pack isn’t given enough opportunity to balance itself (which it wasn’t in this case) the entire pack capacity can be limited by only a few unbalanced cells. If the CMM issue had been triggered earlier with more testing, we would probably have started the race with a well-balanced pack and had access to a bit more capacity on day 1.

By now you might have noticed a common theme in my musings – we didn’t test enough. If shipping hadn’t been so problematic, we might have used our relaxing two weeks in Darwin more productively by (money permitting) spending several days driving the Cox Peninsula road in convoy.

By day two we’d established what went wrong on day 1, and put in place the necessary fixes. This required some proper Outback Engineering and the WSC observer looked on with a concerned expression as we fired up our generator and plugged various cables into the car. After we’d explained (across a slightly difficult language barrier) that we weren’t charging our battery but just powering a couple of laptops and a soldering iron he left us to it.

The rest of the race passed without major technical incident. From this point onwards we encountered all the problems afflicting every team: haze from a large bushfire on days 1-3, bushfires closing the road on day 3, strong crosswinds, lighting storms, quite a bit of rain, and the general lack of sunlight. Every encounter with other teams at control stops began with some engineers standing in a circle looking dejectedly at the clouds and pointing hopefully at a small patch of blue sky in the distance. Towards the end of the race we found ourselves doing a kind of “inverse storm chaser” manoeuvre where we’d trailer as fast as we could away from the bad weather and then spend a few hours at a rest stop where the sky would be lighter or (if we were lucky) we’d get 30 minutes of direct sunlight.

Squeezing every last ounce of energy from a solar electric vehicle is strangely satisfying, especially at the point in a solar race when everyone is resigned to not finishing on solar power alone and what really matters is the number of solar km covered.

So we finished the race in 25th position after covering 1487km on solar power alone. It’d be a lie to say that we’re completely happy with our position. Whilst better weather would almost certainly have enabled us to cover over 2000km, it would also have similarly improved the performance of the other 28 cars who also failed to complete the full distance. We were slightly unlucky to be caught at the back of the pack after day 1 as cloud cover advanced from the north and hit the slowest teams hardest, and we certainly had our share of bad luck with technical issues. But the fact remains that we lost over an hour to an electrical problem that would have been solved before the race if we’d tested more. The resulting sprint to Katherine cost us (and our battery) dearly, and if we’d driven more conservatively we wouldn’t have been forced to trailer on day 1.

One reason for our excessive energy use on day 1 is that our car simply weighed too much. The first half of the race was much hillier than any of us had been expecting and this took a heavy toll. Even with perfect weather, no technical problems, and perfect race strategy, it’s difficult to say whether our current vehicle is genuinely capable of finishing the race on solar power.
We began the year with plans to build a new car, but also with several thousand pounds of debt. Initial optimism, excitement and inspiration gave way to frustration as the decision was made to re-use our 2009 vehicle due to financial issues. This was clearly the right decision at the time – we might never have made it to Australia at all otherwise. To build a competitive solar car requires strong financial backing, and at the start of the year we simply didn’t have this. The other limiting factor is the time required. CUER is composed entirely of Cambridge undergraduate engineers. The Cambridge MEng is demanding and time consuming and where the best solar car teams in the world have a team of full-time engineers on an 18 month sabbatical from their studies, million dollar budgets and dedicated production facilities, we’re the equivalent of a few guys with spanners in a shed. With these constraints and the best will in the world (such as the 2009 team’s: they actually built a new car) you’re never going to build a world-beating vehicle.

Our solar car remains the best in the UK, an achievement we’re immensely proud of. But we recognise that we’re currently not going to beat the top Japanese and Dutch teams at their own game. The World Solar Challenge has made a handful of engineers across the world extremely good at building and racing solar-powered cars that have very little real-world use (but are damn good fun). It’s my personal opinion that CUER should adopt a very “Cambridge” attitude and build a genuinely innovative and perhaps slightly more practical vehicle. This isn’t an easy task and several conditions would make this easier, summarised below in my own personal wish-list:
• A bigger budget (we currently operate with roughly negative money…). This would probably require a large, dedicated business team and might include financial support from the university/department itself.
• A strong dedication of time from perhaps a 10-strong team of undergraduate engineers. Ideally a sabbatical year off the master’s course to concentrate on building the car.
• Dedicated lab space and facilities. Many teams have their own space to build their car. We beg, borrow and steal space from various labs and do a lot of our work in a car park at the back of the department. Other student-run projects in the department suffer from the same lack of facilities. It’s a pretty sad state of affairs when the best university in the world can’t support its own students in such fantastic projects.

Having one or two of the items from the above list would greatly improve our chances of doing something quite special next time around, especially considering at least half the 2011 team are remaining in Cambridge with either PhDs or employment. We’ve all got some fantastic ideas and the technical experience and know-how to put designs into practice.

Having completed the World Solar Challenge is no mean feat, and CUER can be extremely proud that it has now entered twice and still has a fully-functioning solar car. The battery is still workable, we have a robust wiring system, our old and battered solar array still gives us a good power output, and Douglas’s telemetry system performs admirably. Despite the issues, WSC was the experience of a lifetime for all of us.

By this point in the race, we all knew exactly what we were doing and our teamwork was flawless. The race only allows us to drive between 8am and 5pm, but we would always be up before dawn and have camp cleared long before 7am. This gave us plenty of time to trailer Endeavour back to her starting point for the day, and to point the array directly at the sun right up until we were ready to start driving. Each day our scout van, driven by Henry and Oli, would often race ahead to replenish our fuel and water supplies – they did an excellent job and we always had plenty of whatever we needed. The team members in the lead and chase cars, which must always be either side of Endeavour, worked hard to keep track of our progress, to decide what speed to drive at and to provide the solar car driver with encouragement and information. The solar car is cramped, and with no air conditioning the temperature can easily reach 40oC in Australia, so driving Endeavour is by no means comfortable. As for me, I spent most of the time driving our trailer vehicle – a brand new Discovery 4 generously lent to us by Jaguar LandRover. It was a hard life for some!

Thursday saw more great progress until the afternoon when the sky clouded over and it eventually started to rain. We can’t drive Endeavour in the rain – not least because the driver can’t see – and so we trailered to a small resting place called Cadney Homestead. As we arrived the rain had turned to thunder and lightning, and by now most of teams had also been forced to trailer. That evening there were more than 10 teams who had all stopped at Cadney – an impressive site for what is normally a deserted truck stop.

The sky on Friday was completely overcast, but with some charge left in the battery we drove on until we had drained it completely. It was not until Saturday morning at 11am that the sun came out again, and after a brief stop to give the battery at least some charge we drove the rest of the distance to Port Augusta. By this point the roads are starting to get busier, and so the police don’t allow us to drive between Port Augusta and Adelaide after 11am on the Saturday. This meant we knew we had no reason to conserve energy and so driving directly from the midday sun we averaged 80kph for the final 120km to Port Augusta. At least it was a positive note on which to end our solar driving.

In Adelaide, the display in the main square and the awards ceremony were great events to be part of. It was also one of the last chances to meet up with the members of the other teams, many of whom we had made friends with in Darwin and along the route – all the participants in the World Solar Challenge are certainly highly motivated about what they do. We finally finished in 25th position having completed 1487km under solar power, but the numbers do not reflect the full story. Only 7 teams completed the full race distance.

As we look to the future, we maintain our strong ambition to win the race, but we know that we are not going to be able to compete with the top teams at their own game. We have made significant progress in developing a concept for a vehicle which will be more relevant as a practical mode of transport, and this fits in well with the ideals of the event. Many of the team will remain at Cambridge to complete their PhD and so we will be able to provide good continuity to the younger members of the team.

I myself am not continuing at university, but I shall remain involved with the team as best as I can. Was the World Solar Challenge an opportunity not to be missed? Definitely.

Missed Coober Pedy control stop, trailering onwards in thick cloud. All teams we see are in the same position, the fires, cloud and storm have ruined everyone’s race (other than those fast enough to finish before most of us got half way).

Day 6 (~2258km from Darwin)

Endeavour drives on under an overcast sky

We see a break in the clouds, so pull over for 45minutes to gather some charge in the otherwise still overcast conditions. Time constraints for the finishing ceremonies mean we decide to continue under solar power until the pack is virtually flat again. Emil is driving what will likely be the last solar stint of the race. Hoping for another 100km if possible.

Day 6 (~2275km from Darwin)

Its drizzling and cold, we maintain a stiff upper lip and drive through regardless, driver visibility ok for now.

Day 6 (~2276km from Darwin)

1km on and Emil looses drive power, we’re stationary in light drizzle, although the sky is brighter again.

Day 6 (~2276km from Darwin)

We’re on the way again having rebooted the car to clear whatever the issue was.

Day 6 (~2307km from Darwin)

Dense cloud and the rain drains the last of the charge in our battery. We are once again forced to trailer due to the abnormal weather rather than the car braking down.

Day 6 (~2504km from Darwin)

Heading to campsite near salt flats under an overcast sky

Entering the salt flats of South Australia we stop for the night at a camp siter over looking one of the dry lakes.

Day 7 (~2504km from Darwin)

The sky is brighter this morning and it has stopped raining! Patches of blue are starting to emerge from behind the grey. We set off after the usual 8am race start due to trying to gather some charge.

Day 7 (~2521km from Darwin)

10 minutes later the sun has properly emerged and we have patches of the bluest sky we’ve seen since Darwin (no smoke haze!). We pull over to gather more energy in the hope we can continue from here on solar, at least for an hour or so. We have to be in Port Augusta (~200km away) by 3pm race time (4pm SA summer time) and in Adelaide (500km) by 7pm (8pm local time).

Day 7 (~2521km from Darwin)

Sun hidden again, we’re still trailering, some energy gathered though.

Day 7 (~2600km from Darwin)

CUER teams up with MIT to grumble about the weather

Patches of blue sky again, we stop to charge next to MIT who are having the same issues as us. Still hoping to unload for more solar km’s.

Day 7 (~2600km from Darwin)

We’re back under solar power and the sky is clearing, we are now generating more power than we can use as also trying to deplete the battery.

Day 7 (~2719km from Darwin)

We’ve reached Port Augusta and crossed the continent. Unfortunately due to the delays we now have to trailer to Adelaide as the police aren’t willing to patrol the busy roads on a Saturday afternoon. Our race is over! 300km drive to the finish.

Sun is out, sky still slightly hazy due to smoke hanging in the air. Broke camp before 6:30 again to return to start position and gather energy from the rising sun. George driving.

Driver change to Emil good progress under solar power this morning. A few random power losses but the system recovers with a quick reset, cause unknown, it isnt really slowing us down. New bush fires seen starting about 1km to the west of the road. Other teams may get stuck if the fires spread much faster.

Bushfire!

Day 4 (~1302km from Darwin)

We arrive at the (moved) control point under solar power and having put energy into the battery whilst driving. Unfortunately cloud rolls in during the half hour enforced break. We’d like to make it to Alice Springs by close of play, but if the light doesn’t improve we’ll probably stop short. George returns to the cockpit.

Day 4 (~1334km form Darwin)

O nly 32km down the road from the control point, George (aka Kobyashi) reports a complete loss of power. Cause as of yet unkown. Electrical team decide to trailer rather than sit in the clouds (losing sunlight and equivelant to losing power) to figure it out.

Day 4 (~1495km from Darwin)

Arrived at Alice Springs control point on the trailer. With 13 minutes of race time left when we were allowed to leave, it was decided to trailer for that time to macimise our distance from Alice Springs to ensure we weren’t in the morning rush hour traffic.

Day 4 (~1515km from Darwin)

Dan Inspects the battery as the Array is pointed at the setting sun

Wild camping by the side of the road in an area of bush scarred by fairly recent burning. Dan and Ed are frustrated to find out that the battery is near enough full due to charging in the morning session. The loss of power is now most likely attributed to a bad cell management board, at least we know it is not the actual battery and we can draw some power tomorrow in an attempt to reach the Kulgera control point on time.

Camp broken, the scout can is heading back to Alice Springs for supplies and for Emil to get his internet fx and do our PR. With no mobile or internet access available for hundreds of miles at a time (I.E Darwin, Tennant creek, Alice Springs) we need to take the opportunity to update our supporters. The rest of the convuy is ready to go and with a clear sky (excluding the slight hanging smoke haze) and a full battery we’re hopeful of another food solar day.

Day 5 (~1645 from Darwin)

Good running, Tom has driven 125km in just over two hours on solar power. Swapping Lucy into Endeavour, control point in 125km.

Day 5 (~1766 from Darwin)

Kulger Control point reached under solad power, 251km done so far today. The car is running well and it appears the cell management boards are behaving themselves today. However the forecast is for South Australia is cloudy, and the horizon is very dark. Tom returns to the hot seat.

Day 5 (~1786km from Darwin)

NT/SA border reached under solar power.

Day 5 (~1840km from Darwin)

Yet another bush fire likely started by lightning, flames less than 10m from the road side! Smoke and clouds starting to fill the sky again.

Day 5 (~1850km from Darwin)

A few raindrops on our windscreen, we’ll press on until it is safe for Endeavour’s electronics (and Tom’s visibility). The sky looks increasingly ominious.

Day 5 (~1852km from Darwin)

LIGHTNING! We can now see heavy rain, fork lightning and more smoke around us, the wind is picking up too.

Day 5 (~1861km from Darwin)

Rain is now unsafe, cross wind un-drivable. We tarp Endeavour at the roadside in the hope it will pass. 5 minutes later the weather has worsened, we are forced to trailer again. Team disheartened, the car has been running so well in general for the last 3 days and only nature has prevented us from racking up solar kilometres. In a race that’s usually bathed in sun (as onemight have expected for a solar race!) we’ve had three massive roadside fires; burnt out control stops, 100km smoke clouds, dense overcast conditions, a massive thuderstorm and strong cross-winds. It’s almost like being at home!!

Day 5 (~2025km from Darwin)

Cadney Homestead... a tiny fuel stop in the middle of absolutely nowhere

We trailer to Cadney Homestead to camp, we seem to have cleared the rain for the moment but dark clouds strech out as far as the eye can see and it looks like rain will catch up with us shortly.

CUER sets up camp at Cadney

Day 6 (~2025km from Darwin)

Heavy rain overnight, tents just about kept us dry (with the exception of Lucy). 10 or so teams were forced to trailer to the homestead in the evening, most left on trailers at the crack of dawn, giving up more solar kilometers. It looks brighter this morning and far off we can see a small break in the clouds (to the West though, so it is no help to us). We figure we have more battery charge than most of the teams that turned up so we are going to leave under solar power (stored up in the battery at least) and try and gain some more distance. We will just miss the Coober Pedy control point but should make the next one at Glendambo (if we don’t run out of energy first). Clouds looking a bit better, but the forecast isn’t good as we leave.

Day 6 (~2130km from Darwin)

Driven roughly 100km on the battery + a little daylight (no direct sunlight today). The cloud is solid and grey, South Australia is not being conducive to solar racing! Weather map shows a huge cloud parked over the rermainder of the route. We are beggining to suspect that the biggest & fastest teams adopted such a rapid strategy for the first part of the race because they knew this was coming and reckoned they could avoid being stuck under the cloud. The majoirty of the field, including us, has not been so lucky. Race of the trailers is on!

WARNING, LONG BLOG POST!

The past week has involved further testing, some track time, scrutineering, qualifying, supply shopping and the start of the race. We have been so busy (along with fairly limited internet access) that finding the time to actually upload these posts has been a challenge and as a result this one covers a week and is being uploaded form the third control stop in Tennant creek, NT.

Scrutineering

We were asked to present Endeavour for scrutineering on Thursday 13^th at the Darwin showground. The process involves various experts, academics and volunteers, questioning the team and inspecting the solar car and its support vehicles. Passing the regulations laid out by the WSC, Northern Territory government and Southern Australia governments ensures a fair, safe and legal competition.

However as with any motorsport, the regulations are not explicitly clear and are open for interpretation to allow innovation. As a result many teams fail certain regulations unexpectedly when the scrutineer’s interpretation is different to their own.

Our results were mixed! The car was 7mm too wide and 10mm too long; we’d completely forgotten about presenting a lockable battery box; the convoy vehicles were not present (due to hire starting on the Friday); we had no decals or safety markings (British Airways that is your fault!); insufficient battery extinguishing plans (the datasheet said use a water extinguisher!). Some electronics needed double insulating and others covering up and they were dubious about the rear view camera performance. The new steering wheel design also fell foul of the regulations: apparently we were meant to telepathically interpret that a diagram about no sharp edges also meant there had to be hand holes on all sides (similar to road car as apposed to an F1 style steering wheel). Nearly all teams failed this unwritten regulation.

Thursday afternoon was spent correcting the faults where possible to revisit the showground on Friday with the real convoy vehicles. We cleared everything other than the decal/stickers which we were permitted to do at qualifying. It should be said that provided you are not going to be contesting the top positions then the rules are slightly flexible. They would prefer everyone races!

One thing that struck us all was the amount of money and sponsorship that the majority of teams have. Even our veteran Lucy commented on the quantity of ‘good’ (i.e. various copies of previous Nuon and Tokai cars) only made possible by the magnitude of sponsorship. It made us incredibly grateful for the generosity of our sponsors, but at the same time very frustrated that we cannot compete effectively almost entirely due to funding. Some teams will spend more on fuel in the race than we will have done over the previous two years on the car and all of our team logistics. We may be able to design something novel and theoretically competitive for the 2013 race, but the team needs the more financial backing and stronger industrial links to build it.

Nearly every single other team we spoke to was shocked to learn that “the world’s best university” had turned up with only a slightly modified car. The rest of the field and most of the new entrants have brand new vehicles, most now have a largely carbon fibre chassis or are moulded carbon fibre monocoques. We turned up with a car over twice the mass of the front runners! Many teams just could not understand why sponsorship is so hard to obtain in the UK or why the University isn’t able to give us financial backing (“…but its Cambridge, surely they’ll give you money…”. It turns out many universities pump up in excess of 50k into their teams each year! We of course know that the university funding system is not as cash rich as many countries and that UK businesses often find it hard to justify expenditure on small projects. So again a big thank you to our sponsors who do support us, be it software, hardware, materials, expertise or monetary.  We have got the car through scrutineering and are cleared to proceed to qualifying!

Qualifying

With no sign of the decals from BA we eventually settled on a reasonably (but still expensive) deal from a local printer. Cars decaled up we were cleared to qualify. We knew from previous track testing that the new wheel rims could make light contact with the suspension forks in hard cornering so the team decided to take a hit on the qualifying position so as not to risk damaging the car. The highway out of of Darwin is at least two lanes for hte first sixty kilometres so overtaking slower cars would not be a problem. Qualifying first was Twente with a time of 2:02.2 (iirc) with Nuon fractionally behind them at 2:02.5 (iirc). We qualified 30^th out of 36, with a time of 3:11, but as mentioned this was largely due to not wanting to damage the suspension forks on the race track (there are no high speed corners or hairpin bends on the Stuart Highway).

Following qualifying we packed up and prepared to race!

Race Day 1 (8:30 GMT+9:30)

We are off… and the car is working well, Tom in the cockpit. The Police presence and escort through Darwin’s many, many intersections helps the flow of solar cars out of the city. We’re planning to run at 60km/h for the time being, although this may change depending on traffic, weather, terrain and the telemetry data (if it works – a dodgy fuse in the AC inverter in the chase car we have no telemetry radio.

Race Day 1 (~90km from Darwin)

Good running until now, we have overtaken multiple convoys including the poll sitters Twente who seemed to break down only 3km from the start line. Our first unscheduled stop: Tom calls over the radio he has lost drive power, cause unknown. But by the time we pull over things have righted themselves and we are back on our way, however slightly concerned that we may have an electrical problem lurking ahead.

Race Day 1 (~120km from Darwin)

Approaching our planed driver change time, Tom reports complete loss of power. Turns out the heat has killed the new steering wheel . An hour spent by the side of the road. Dan and Ed rig the old wheel in parallel with the new one to allow both electronic and mechanical driver control again. Lucy swaps into the driver’s seat.

Race Day 1 (~173km from Darwin)

Hayes Hill, the steepest hill on the route causes chaos. The combination of a multitude of team support vehicles, road trains and solar cars going up a steep incline meant the traffic ground to a halt. Not good for solar cars who struggle with the incline at the best of times. Endeavour, along with every other solar car we saw, stopped half way up the hill. So had to be push started to get going again. We took this decision quickly, despite it potentially carrying a time penalty, many other teams were just stood scratching their heads or considering loading their cars onto trailers on the steep hill!

Day 1 (263km from Darwin)

The lack of telemetry, hilly terrain and our extended stop for the steering wheel fault has caught us out. In an attempt to reach the first control point at Katharine on time, we pushed the battery too hard and ended up with a low voltage. No option but to trailer for the remaining race hours. Our plan to finish the race on solar power alone is over. Now we are back to beating last year’s result of 1414km under solar power. The team are obviously very disappointed, but the problems in the chase car and the steering wheel failing in the prolonged heat, were not something we could have planned for.  This leaves us in a difficult position of having to nurse a depleted (and now possibly unbalanced) battery. Trailered to Katherine control point (which had closed by the time we’d loaded up and driven there).  Day finished at 381 km.

Day 2 (~381km from Darwin)

With essentially a flat pack, we made the decision to trailer to the second control point at Dunmarra. This would put us back on track in terms of our distance target, even if it wasn’t to be solar kilometres. The Old steering wheel was fitted properly to stop the driver having to use two wheels to control the car!

Day 2 (~631km from Darwin)

Arrived at Dunmarra check point at 11:15. We hoped the battery would have recovered slightly in the 3 hours of trailering, so Endeavour was unloaded and we started again under solar power. With George driving, the next few hours passed without incident and we started to clock up some solar km. Ed constantly instructing George to alter his speed to maintain a neutral power draw.

Day 2 (~776km from Darwin)

Driver swap to Emil. Very dark bank of cloud on the horizon. Possible storm, outlook for solar kilometres doesn’t look good.

Day 2 (~790km from Darwin)

Bank of cloud turns out to be controlled burning of the bush, not good for solar cars it may as well be night. We are forced to trailer. We expect many other teams will now not complete the race under solar power due to the lack of sunlight today!

Day 2 (~880km from Darwin)

We clear the huge smoke cloud, hasty tdecision is made to try and get some solar kilometres in before the race stops for the day. George back in the car.

Day 2 (~895km from Darwin)

Decision to try solar km’s was probably a silly one, obtaining power neutrality at this time of day is impossible. We stop 15minutes early to point the array at the sun on the side of the road, we need the energy more than the distance tonight.

Day 3 (~895km from Darwin)

The sky is clear! Lucy in the car. We leave camp at 6:15 to get the array pointed at the sun. By 8am it is generating nearly 600W on the stands (much less once back on the car). Dan and Ed are still nursing the battery over telemetry but we are making good progress. We are hoping to hit Control Point 3 at Tennant Creek, 988km from Darwin, by the end of Lucy’s stint. The car is otherwise working well. We are discharging the battery slightly this morning, but it is manageable, power balance should be on the charging side by the time we clear CP3. With any luck we will also make CP4 (Barrow Creek Hotel – 1210km) from Darwin today

Day 3 (~988km from Darwin)

We made it to Tennant creek on solar power. Apparently there are more fires down the route, teams were forced to stop here yesterday afternoon and are still here. We don’t yet know how long until we set off.

Turns out we were held for just shy of four hours, there are reports that the next checkpoint was destroyed by fire, as such it has been moved 100km south to Ti Tree. Many teams will get stuck in Tennant Creek overnight due to the fire delay and the slow progress on day 2. We are underway on solar power again, battery as full as the imbalanced pack will allow. Tom driving.

Day 3 (~1090km from Darwin)

Afternoon went by without a hitch. First full day on solar power! Team understandably in good spirits despite the delays. Camping at the stunning Devil’s Marbles.

In the eight days since the last blog update, the car has undergone a transformation and driven further and faster than it has since the last race. On Thursday 6^th, with the car mechanically and electrically sound (and with clearance to road test from the NT authorities), we took a very shabby Endeavour II out for a spin. No paint, wheel covers, bare carbon fibre patches and no canopy meant we were not the most aerodynamic or prettiest of solar vehicles out on the road, but then we weren’t too worried about the car getting dirty or scratching our paintwork before the prerace events. We saw Nuon’s Nuna6 (odds on favourites to win by all accounts) along with cars from Twente and Umicore (who are running a 3m² Gallium Arsenide array with concentrators).

The purpose of testing the car before we finished all the work was to hopefully highlight any underlying problems. Mechanically the car passed the day without issue, electrically we found a few niggles. Dan, rather embarrassingly, had cross wired the rear indicators (attempting to signal right resulted in the front right and rear left indicators flashing!) and the brake lights were intermittent – put down to the micro switch on the brake pedal. Between Lucy and George driving, we covered 150km (94miles) and it gave us the opportunity to practice convoy driving and radio communication along the way. Even without our full aero package, George hit 93kph (58mph) without really pushing the car. Whilst we won’t be sustaining that speed in the race, it was comforting to know that all systems seemed to be operating according to plan.

That was until we unloaded at BOC to find the car had no power. The battery discharge contactor was open due to a low cell voltage warning from the battery management system. Slightly disheartened after a good first day of testing, it was found to be the same two cells we had replaced the day before. Eventually Ed diagnosed an internal short on one of the cell management modules was causing the two cells to continually discharge. Whilst excellent to diagnose this has meant replacing the cells again and having to go through the lengthy process of recharging and balancing the pack to operate optimally.

Other than sorting the battery problems, the next few days largely revolved around preparing the car’s shell for painting… but that post (and pictures) will have to wait until the morning.

Sorry for the lack of updates… not much was happening (other than Alisdair’s comedic conversations with the shipping company). As of Thursday 29th WE HAVE THE CAR!

Wednesday saw Dan spend hours sweating whilst unpacking the container, as the dock workers were too… well built… to fit under the trailer. But his efforts got the container through customs faster than we could have wished for (two weeks ago).

George and Oli went to the dock yard first thing Thursday for a ‘four hour’ quarantine session; thankfully the officer assigned to our case convinced himself that we must work in a clean room so he didn’t need to look at everything, 50 minutes later we were done.

Sitting down to lunch we were greeted by a long-awaited phone call, the contents of the container were ours… but must be collected in the next two hours after also visiting the office on the other side of Darwin. We managed most of the stuff, with another trip required Friday morning. With Endeavour finally in the workshop, we began on the long to-do list. The new wheels also arrived from the UK.

Due to something about lectures and University we swapped Douglas for David on Friday, and picked up Lucy and Tom on Saturday.

As of Saturday evening, the top and bottom shell have been repaired so the once again fit together correctly and all of the dzus fasteners work to lock the car together. The Sava tyre has been fitted to the motor cover, with some modifications to the central fairing and the mud guard to accommodate its slightly larger profile. We have yet to get the new rear wheels (or indeed their tyres) to fit on the car; that is a job for Monday once Tom, David and Lucy join us at BOC. The brakes are fixed and the canopy fittings (joggle and hinges) are now well on the way to completion. Electrically, the rear view camera, steering wheel and telemetry work. However several systems that worked when we packed the container seem to have developed faults in transit. For example, both the MPPT and motor controller pre-charge/discharge controllers are no longer closing the contactors despite no changes having been made to this system that has performed without fault all year.

Me: Hi, our freight handlers say you haven’t released the container to them yet. Is there a problem?
Customer Services: Certainly, sir. Do you remember the Shipping Instructions – the ones I told you were okay two weeks ago? Well, it turns out they weren’t okay – we need some more details. Can you fill in this form? [Attaches form]
Me: [Attaches complete form]. Okay, that’s annoying but never mind. Will you be able to issue the Bill of Lading now?
CS: Certainly, sir.  It will be issued today.

The next day (Australian daytime)

Me: Hi, have you been issued the Bill of Lading yet?
Freight Handler: No, the shipping company say you haven’t paid them, so they can’t release the container to us.
Me: Well, that’s probably because they’ve not invoiced me… I think I’d better speak to them.

Later that day (UK daytime)

Me: Hi, I still need the Bill of Lading issued for this container. I understand there’s a hold-up because I haven’t paid the shipping fees?
CS: Ah, certainly sir. Let me put you through to our finance department and you can pay straight away.

Me: Hi, I need to make payment for a shipment.
Finance: Certainly, sir. How much do you owe us?
Me: What?
Finance: How much do you owe us?
Me: I don’t know. You’ve not given me an invoice yet.
Finance: Okay, let me put you through to Customer Services. They can tell you how much you owe.

Me: Hi, I need to make payment for a shipment, but you’ve not given me an invoice yet. Can you tell me how much money I should give you?
CS: Certainly, sir. It’s £350.
Me: Is that all?
CS: Yes, but who’s paying for the rest?
Me: Err, I’m paying for everything.
CS: Okay. Well that’s $89.
Me: Okay…
CS: And A$450…
And €2,330
Me: Okay. And how should I pay?
CS: Well, you can’t pay until we’ve issued an invoice. I’ll get our finance department to issue one today.

Later that day
CS: It can take up to 48 hours for Finance to issue an invoice.

Not quite 48 hours (plus a weekend) later

Me: Hi, I still need to give you money. Can you please get me that invoice?
CS: Certainly, sir. I’ll speak to our finance department. I’ll call you back in ten to fifteen minutes.

1 hour later
CS: Hi, sir. Your invoice will be issued in 1 to 1 ½ hours.

2 hours later
CS: Are you paying for all the charges related to your shipment?

1 hour later
Me: Hi, I’ve still not got that invoice
CS: Really!? Hold on… [Calls Finance]
Yes, sir. Finance have produced your invoice, but you’re not allowed to have it. There’s a block on your account – it’s to prevent you giving us money.
Me: Right…
CS: We can get the block removed, but it will have to go through Head Office…
And Head Office is in Asleep-istan, so we won’t be able to sort this until tomorrow morning.

The next day

Me: Hi, I’ve got a container that’s been sitting in Darwin for 10 days. And I’ve been trying to get you to let me pay you for the last 5 days. I need you to give me an invoice, let me pay you money, and then issue the Bill of Lading. And I’ll stay on the line until it’s sorted. Okay?
CS: Certainly, sir…

Time-filling measures began with a visit to Litchfield National Park. Our plan to set off at 8am was scuppered by half the team not being awake, but we were soon on our way. We decided to stop at the care hire company to drop off the police incident number for the car accident the previous day, in attempt to speed up the insurance claim process. While Alisdair and Oli went inside for a few minutes the rest of the team enjoyed the benefits of air conditioning inside the car, only to realise slightly too late that this drained the battery almost immediately and without warning. At least the car park of the car hire company is the most convenient place to break down.

Why don’t normal cars have warnings that the battery is getting low? If a bunch of students can build a solar car that does this (on a budget of £0) why can’t Mitsubishi build it into their Outlander 4×4 which we’re being charged a fortune for? At least we got a free battery boost from the friendly car hire people.

The trip down the Stuart Highway gave us the ideal opportunity to scout the first few hours of the race. Highlights include: a few slight inclines, lots of traffic initially but barely any after a few miles, some roadworks and an unexpected diversion through a residential area. We were also surprised to encounter some hazy cloud. Cloud poses interesting problems for a solar car with a limited energy budget on a 3000km journey. Does the driver slow down to drive more efficiently, speed up to escape the cloud, or ignore it and hope for the best? A constant speed strategy is often said to be the best, overall strategy in an endurance solar event, but decisions will always have to be made during the race itself, in response to environmental issues.

Litchfield park was incredible. We swam in some waterfalls and a lake, marvelled at magnetic termite mounds, saw some big spiders, and Dan got told off by a park ranger for jumping off rocks. George continues to film everything, and points his video camera at anything and anyone of interest. Inexplicably, he wasn’t filming himself as he was warned about the slippery rocks and promptly fell and landed heavily on his rear end. Thankfully the camera was held safely above his head the whole time. All in all Litchfield is a really beautiful place which is well worth a visit.

On our way back we tried to look around the hidden valley race track where qualifying will take place, but found our entry blocked by a few burly-looking security guards intent on charging us money.

On Sunday we discussed our plans for the week (assuming we have a solar car to work on soon). We all know what we have to do, but it’s often useful to discuss priorities, especially with such a limited time frame and manpower.

In other news, Douglas has lost his shoes. If anyone sees them, find us and let us know. If you’re the thief, we’ll find you, you filthy piece of dirt.

Darwin has a really excellent beach market which we visited last night. Crocodile burgers and a sunset over the water completed quite a relaxed day. Alisdair (ever the stereotypical scot) was placated with a plate of fish and chips, but decided against the deep fried Mars bars.

Hopefully this blog will soon be full of brief technical updates and we’ll all be extremely busy. But there really isn’t much we can do with the car until we have it in front of us.