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CUER Millbrook Event – Saturday 4th February 2012

Posted on February 9, 2012 by rjw208

On Saturday CUER held one of its largest events to date, a full afternoon of presentations, mingling and even a little bit of road-testing at Millbrook Proving Ground in Bedfordshire.
As the home of many Top Gear tests, Millbrook seemed like the perfect place to invite a selection of some of our most dedicated sponsors to get an update on how the team did in the late World Solar Challenge last year, as well as look ahead to our strategy for the next race in 2013.

Being a test centre for military vehicles and new concept cars for manufacturers like Jaguar and Lotus, security turned out to be tight – very tight. All 450 acres or so of the complex is strictly prohibited for photographers without a specially-appointed photo minder provided by Millbrook themselves, which pretty much puts having to sign a form saying ‘we won’t take any pictures from our mobiles – promise!’ into perspective.

Anti-reconnaissance aside, we arrived at their ultra-modern Concept Centre and found ourselves immediately swept up by Millbrook’s wonderful hospitality team. This gave us a few precious moments to mingle with some of the sponsors who had chosen to arrive even…
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Queen Edith Primary School

Posted on February 4, 2012 by ds505

Our first solar car Affinity starred as one of the largest attractions at Queen Edith Primary School’s “Science and Technology Saturday” event on 28th January 2012. Other activities on the day included: manufacturing Jelly Baby DNA, playing with insects, posing with skeletons and a show involving baguette swordplay.

Getting Affinity to and from the school was the hardest part of the day, not to mention the early start on a Saturday, and missing the turning into the storage area for Affinity. The main question one should ask is how many engineers does it take to move a trailer with Affinity on board? It’s a trick question – the answer is just one (+ a chemist and a physicist). Removing Affinity from its storage container was like parallel parking into a space a few inches larger than the size of the car – possible, but must be done with great precision, skill, and the odd bit of brute force to move objects out of the way. After removing Affinity, putting the solar panel canopy back and fastening her down, we were ready to visit the school.

Approximately two minutes after departing, there were growing concerns not just for the poor line…
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Ardingly College meets CUER

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Lucy Fielding

On Saturday the 21st of January, CUER played host to an extremely enthusiastic – and possibly crazy – group of students from Ardingly College who are hoping to start up their own solar car engineering project. Despite a 30-minute long presentation describing exactly why they shouldn’t attempt such a time- and soul-devouring endeavour, they were as adamant and keen as ever. They had a tour of the Engineering Department and a chance to talk to several members of the team about their specific areas of interest. We were impressed by their attitudes and wish them the best of luck. Hopefully, ALP Solar will become the fourth such team in the UK.

: CUER and Ardingly College at the end of a tiring day

We leave you with a selection of comments and photos from the students themselves.

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Lucy’s Race Report

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Lucy Fielding

The 2011 World Solar Challenge officially began on Sunday 16^th October 2011. Unofficially, it began much earlier than that. It’s difficult to pinpoint when, and for each team it is different. The day the car is shipped away; the day it arrives; the day testing begins; the day the build begins; the day the design is finalised; the day the entry fee is paid; the day the decision is made to participate at all.

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…
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Dan’s Race Report

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Daniel Chambers

This is not so much a race report as a summary of the entire year’s efforts, challenges, disappointments and successes. The culmination of all this activity was Australia’s WSC 2011, so in non-chronological fashion I’ll start there.

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…
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Alisdair’s Race Report

Posted on October 29, 2011 by Alisdair McClymont

To drive the Stuart Highway, the 3000km stretch of road which runs between Darwin in the north of Australia and Adelaide in the south, is a test of the endurance of any vehicle. For the World Solar Challenge, the objective is simple: to complete this route in a little over 6 days, using only energy collected from the sun. As an undergraduate starting university in 2007, I had little doubt that to be part of a team which would compete in this event was an opportunity I couldn’t afford to miss.
A little under four years later, I flew out to Darwin with 11 other recently graduated engineers from the University of Cambridge for the 2011 Veolia World Solar Challenge. By this point our team had already built a car which had competed in the 2009 race (the World Solar Challenge is run every two years), and we were using the same car again although we had made several significant changes. In 2009 the car had suffered major problems with its battery and the reliability of the electrical systems, so we had fixed these issues and also made major aerodynamic improvements to the canopy and wheel fairings. Nonetheless, we…
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Race part 3

Posted on October 22, 2011 by Oli Smith

Day 6 (~2178 from Darwin)

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)

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…
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In Race Updates: Part 2

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Alisdair McClymont

Day 4 (~1190km from Darwin)

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.

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…
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In Race Updates: Part 1

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Oli Smith

Scrutineering, qualifying, RACE!

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…
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A Lick Of Paint

Posted on October 12, 2011 by Daniel Chambers

Dan sprays the underneath of the trailing edge

Saturday was a milestone for CUER. The car was finally ready to be painted. The reason this was a milestone is because we will no longer have to sand the outer shell. After a long Friday night with far too much sandpaper, this was a relief for the team.

George puts on his goggles

BOC, having noted our penchant for making a mess (and probably also having noted all the orange smiley faces cropping up around the place since we bought a fluorescent aerosol) kindly offered us the use of their paint bay and special spray gun. So we loaded Endeavour onto the trailer and brought her round to the bay.

Dan called dibs on spraying the first coat and, after careful instruction from Richard (and some practice on an old tin) he was ready to go.

Of course, none of this took place without very careful protection of the non-paintable components (i.e. everything that wasn’t the outer shell), and a significant amount of time was spent taping dust sheets over the entire internal structure.

Prepping the newspaper array shield ready for painting

The first coat was applied with no problems and after turning the car ghost-white the paint gun was handed over to Lucy for coat number 2, which…
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