One more note on the race
Tuesday July 29, 2008 03:13 PM |
For those of you wondering, Rain Dancer drove more than 1000 miles in this race. Of the 15 teams driving, only 5 were able to make it the entire 2400 miles without trailering their car. One thousand miles is our first success of many to come.
The team has already begun designing the next car. Now that we have all this experience and so many contacts with the other teams, we are setting our sights high for the next race! The biggest challenge of the next year will be fundraising and collecting materials. Please contact us if you want to get involved! |
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Finished and home!
Tuesday July 29, 2008 03:09 PM |
The OSU team finished with the inevitable tie for 14th place! We are in 14th with our good friends from Durham University in the United Kingdom. Our strategy for the last few days was to drive around 100 miles a day and then charge up so we would have full charge for the last leg of the race. We were able to drive about 100 miles on the last day; we would have liked to drive more than that but the constant 15 mph head wind and partial cloud cover drained our batteries faster than we would have liked.
All of the team and vehicles have returned to Oregon and we are all getting our lives back in order :) Hai Yue, Jason, and I took the car to Mentor Graphics yesterday to show it off to employees, their kids, and other businesses in the area. The people at Mentor Graphics were very accomodating, very kind, and asked fantastic questions! We stopped by Willsonville Honda on our way back so they could see it as well.
Our next outing will be on August 24th when we take the solar car to the Oregon State Fair at the Salem fairgrounds.
We are also planning an awards celebration/open house with the date TBA.
Thank you again to all of our team members and sponsors! We could not have done this without each one of you! |
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From Regina to Medicine Hat
Monday July 21, 2008 07:27 AM |
The team has stopped at a cheap motel with internet (yay!) in Regina, Saskatchawan. To correct the last post we actually drove a little over 100 miles yesterday, but only 70 when I last talked with my sister. We would have liked to have driven farther but low battery charge convinced us to stop and trailer. When we arrived at Winnipeg our batteries were basically empty so we waited until the clouds parted periodically to get a little charge. The next morning the thunderstorm Winnipeg prohibited charging.
Our strategy is currently to drive a little bit on each leg but to charge a lot to start with a full battery before the last leg from Medicine hat to Calgary. These last two checkpoint intervals are huge; in one and a half days the teams are meant to drive one leg of 224 miles and another of 295 miles; the second leg is the first part of the race to be given much less time per mile. Most legs are calculated so that a team can average 25 mph and still complete them; this biggest leg is scheduled to be open for only four hours, requring an average of 65 mph to complete in time if teams have been averaging 25 up until now. We will drive as far as we can and then trailer to get into the stage stop on time. The weather is supposed to be nice today and a little cloudy tomorrow. At least we don't see any thunder storm warnings along the route this time!
The car has been working well. When it was raining yesterday we got a call from Justin (the driver) saying "Um, guys, is it supposed to be raining inside the car?". We pulled over and used some plastic to stop the steady stream of water from flying off the rear tire onto Justin's head.
Our tires have been wearing very slowly thanks to the fantastic alignment help from Tristan of the Minnesota team. So far during the race we have had to stop very few times for any car problems. Our biggest problems have been with chain tensioning and gear ratio; we are one of maybe two teams to use a chain drive due to high cost of hub motors. Looking ahead at the elevation maps between Medicine Hat and Calgary we plan on changing to a lower gear to deal with the hills at the end of the route. So far all of our driving in Canada has been very flat, which is the terrain we were hoping for on the first half of the race.
See you all at home in a few days!
Our team is definitely looking forward to finishing the race tomorrow and driving home. Canada is beautiful and very inviting for solar cars. When we came across the border there was a lane labeled "solar cars only". Once inside the country we started seeing signs on the side of the road flasing "Slow moving vehicles, solar car event, Winnipeg to Regina" with the city names matching each day's leg of the journey. People here are very interested in our car. Every time we stop we have people driving up to talk to us. People drive very slowly by to check out the car or they just stop up ahead and wait for us. The other drivers have all been very considerate. We see a lot of people standing or sitting at the side of the road to get some solar car watching time. |
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Sunday, July 20th
Sunday July 20, 2008 05:00 PM |
Since the team is in Canada, they say it's too expensive to call but we can text message (I sure hope they're right!). I've gotten a few text messages from them.
They're looking for hotels between Regina and Branon. They drove the car 70 miles today and are trailering the rest of the way due to poor weather. There were thunder storms this morning while they were charging. They plan in being in Brendon by 2pm, Regina by 2pm tomorrow and Medicine Hat by 6pm tomorrow (Monday).
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Day 6 - morning
Friday July 18, 2008 10:21 AM |
So far, Rain Dancer has driven 630 miles! Farther than anything _I've_ ever built! : )
They are in Minnesota somewhere and are stopped to do some repairs (they've had to do _very_ few repairs while on the road, luckily!).
The car went up to 49 mph today!
Ok, enough excalimation points. : )
Here's a partial breakdown of the miles traveled so far:
Day 1 - 128 miles (poor weather, some repairs)
Day 2 - 0 miles (trailered to get to check point)
Day 3 - 210 miles (good stretch, not enough to keep up with the others)
Day 4 - Unsure
Day 5 - Unsure (sorry, she coudln't find the sheet of paper while I was on the phone, but days 4 and 5 add together to make about 250 miles)
Day 6 - 24 miles so far, will be hitting the road again soon.
Keep up the good work! : ) |
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Retraction
Thursday July 17, 2008 04:36 PM |
Sorry, it wasn't Minnesota's team, but Missouri S&T who had a battery fire. And luckily, the batteries weren't in their car. They weren't even the main batteries.
The batteries that caught fire were some back-up auxiliary lithium-ion batteries used to power the on-board computer system. But unfortunately the fire did about $6000 worth of damage to the house and belongings of the solar race support who was housing them at the time. If anyone with money reads this, send some donations that guy's way to help support the supporters of the race. : )
I thought that I already posted a correction to this, but apparently my unreliable wireless connection was misleading. Sorry it took me so long to delete inaccurate information. I’m very glad that the situation was not nearly as bad as we feared.
Check out some of the picture sites for some new pics of the team:
http://solartrip08.wordpress.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28376685@N02/
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Race day 3 (Tuesday, July 15th) update. : )
Tuesday July 15, 2008 10:50 PM |
This is Becky again.
I just talked to Kathy. The team is camping right now.
Last night Hai Yue and Jason, with the help of the German team and the team from Minnesota, stayed up until 2:30 in the morning troubleshooting a computer issue. It turned out that they had reprogrammed their chip, but the programmer's ISP was bad (Hai Yue - I want info on how that thing broke so I can report it for a project I'm working on, and if anyone else has had good or bad experiences with design or development kits for microcontrollers or other components and you think your information would help other engineers when choosing kits, let me know). The programmer wouldn’t verify certain addresses and had sent wrong info to the chip. Then, it stopped programming entirely. It turned out that the socket used to hold the 20-pin chip (I’m like 80% sure about these details) was no longer making proper contact and was unusable. Another team helped provide a new socket that is probably the same kind as their broken one, so later they can possibly fix their own programmer.
As a result of the faulty programmer, their controller board no longer worked. Luckily, the Germany team had a spare Atmel programmer and lent it to OSU for the remainder of the race. Hai Yue had to install the German version of the software to use the programmer, which I’ve found to be less difficult to use than you’d think. I hope Hai Yue has as easy a time guessing German as I have.
Can you believe the German team was the _only_ other team using Atmel? Hai Yue says that most use PIC or some really high-end micros of which he didn’t know the manufacturer.
They sound like they’re really doing well but also wish they didn’t have to stop Rain Dancer so often to let other cars pass (what a waste of energy!).
Until later. : )
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Third day of race! : )
Tuesday July 15, 2008 08:21 PM |
Kathy called with the following report:
They are camping about 28mi. South of Topeka, Kansas at a rest area that has
showers and laundry facilities. They drove 210 miles today, hitting
sustained speeds of 45mph. They had to stop for a loose set-screw in the
accelerator control linkage, but the car is great! They had to stop often,
while on 2-lane roads to let faster traffic pass (one of the rules), which
caused a much slower average speed than expected. They should hit the next
check-point tomorrow morning. The batteries charge was quite low when they
stopped at 6pm, and are currently charging at about 700 Watts in the evening
sunlight.
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Still in the race!!!!
Monday July 14, 2008 03:09 PM |
OSU is still in the race!
The judges decided today that OSU will be allowed to continue along the race, but they will be kicked out if they make any traffic violations. None of the teams are allowed to make any traffic violations, of course.
Kathy says that OSU will not be able to make better than 14th place out of the 15 teams. Not bad, considering that so many teams are on their ways home! : )
Go OSUSVT!!!! |
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First day of race! : )
Sunday July 13, 2008 06:30 PM |
Hello, solar fans, this is Becky again. : )
Here's the news about the first day of the race! There were supposed to be some posts throughout the day, but I kind of dropped the ball on that one - Sorry! (some apologetic smiley face)
Today they drove 130 miles! This is just short of the distance to the check point, but there is a good chance that OSU will be allowed to stay in the race. Rain Dancer preformed as expected, but weather conditions and a few delays caused the team to fall short of today’s check point. They will be staying tonight in McAlester, OK, and trailering Rain Dancer to Neosho, MO tomorrow for judges at the stage stop to decide if OSU should stay in the race or not.
Kathy seems very happy with the way things are going, since at 2:45pm Pacific Time today they made it past the goal of 100 miles, driven on the vehicle’s own propulsion powered by the sun. At that time, they needed to drive 50 more miles in two hours and were averaging 30 mph, but unfortunately the sun kept hiding behind clouds and got weak after 5pm, as is expected, so they couldn’t make it to the first check point. They had no problems with the car the last 4 or 5 hours of travel, though, which means that after getting a few kinks out, this car has turned out very well. Kathy feels that if they are not allowed to continue to compete, they have done very well for a first-time team and would probably just go home, saving a lot of gas and money (that they don’t have), but they still hope to be allowed to continue. I believe that they will be continuing on due to the fact that, under normal summer conditions or if any one of their stops had been avoided they would have made it to the last check point. I’m sending positive energy their way! : )
The team only had to stop four times today. Once was for rain, once to re-solder the motor controller cable (which took 30 precious minutes!), and twice to troubleshoot and fix a wrong-sized set pin failing to hold a sprocket in place (luckily they were able to replace it with the proper pin).
The rain, as you can imagine, was so heavy that the team had to seek cover for Rain Dancer, and the only thing around was the First Methodist Church of Howe, TX. Kathy said that the team stopped and asked for help covering Rain Dancer and the church quickly provided plastic table cloths and a covered area to store the vehicle in. They stayed there for about an hour, waiting for the rain to stop. The team’s benevolent hosts invited them to stop by in two years when they do the next race. : ) Kathy doesn’t know if the church people had ever heard of the solar race before or not. Sometimes it shows up in local media.
The cloud cover today was complete until about 3pm, and then partial after that, which didn’t matter much since the sun’s intensity is noticeably lower much later than the mid-afternoon, anyway. I can only imagine that the teams who could get the 21% efficient solar cells are able to do a little better in these conditions. Maybe for the next race they will be able to get better cells.
Well, thanks for listening to the update! We’ll keep you posted! : )
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We're in the race!!!
Friday July 11, 2008 08:05 PM |
We had a rough qualifying event today; we had one flat tire that took a while to change out and we had to change the gearing ratio for the track and speed we were driving. Though we didn't finish all 60 laps in the allotted time, the race officials agree to have us race with all the other cars as long as we make it to the first two check points!!! The first check point is only 150 miles from Plano, TX (McAlester, OK.
Of the 24 teams that originally signed up for the race only 18 made it to scrutineering and of those 18 at least 2 have dropped out. We talked with a team today who was working with their third car; the first two did not pass scrutineering in previous years so this was their first race. It is a fantastic accomplishment that we have made it this far on our first attempt and we are very proud to be representing OSU in this engineering challenge. |
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Passed scrutineering, qualifying here we come!
Thursday July 10, 2008 10:37 PM |
We have effectively passed all scrutineering for the car. All we have left to do is to drive the car in a circle for the inspector tomorrow morning (we changed out the steering arm so we have a tighter turning radius). We will also have them scrutineer our support vehicles and our ability to respond to emergency situation, such as a flat tire on the solar car. The NASC website has not been updated as of right now so we still appear to not be passing srutineering, but we are. So, we are now cleared to attend the qualifier tomorrow; 60 laps around the track in less than five hours. It's a little over 125 miles. If we don't break down in a complicated way or crash horribly we should be able to do that just fine.
More to come later! |
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Scrutineering coming along!
Thursday July 10, 2008 09:03 AM |
This is Becky again.
Kathy just called and said that they got their Battery Protection System qualified (green). They will do the dynamic testing at 6pm today and expect to pass. They also need to have their strobe checked. So by the end of the day we should se more green dots by OSU's name here http://americansolarchallenge.org/event/asc2008/scrutineering.html.
It sounds like all the teams are working hard and having a good, positive experience with each other. : ) |
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Scrutineering!
Wednesday July 9, 2008 09:49 PM |
I know several of you have been interested in more blog posts. Here is the address of Lindsey's blog (she is our videorapher): http://solartrip08.wordpress.com/. Also, you can go to the NASC webpage to keep up with the scrutineering results: www.americansolarchallenge.org.
We have spent this week going through scrutineering where the NASC officials make sure that our car is functional and safe. We have passed most of our inspections (the inspection webpage isn't updated as of this posting), but we are still working on our battery management system. Hai Yue and Jason are beginning a potentially long nigh of chasing a short.
After all of the mechanical and electrical inspections the drivers are required to take the car through the dynamic tests. During these tests drivers are chosen to perform figure eights and slolom tracks, as well as stopping from 25 mph in less than 3 seconds over pavement that is covered in soapy water. Sounds like fun.
After all of the scrutineering events have been passed we will proceed to the qualifying event. Our car will be driving at least 125 miles in 5 hours around the track here at Cresson. If all goes well, we will be performing this on Friday, followed by a display day Saturday at the Plano Center in Plano, Texas and then the race start on Sunday at 9am.
We hope to have more good news for you all tomorrow! Keep your fingers crossed for those guys who are searching for the short! |
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Arrived at Cresson Motorsport Ranch
Sunday July 6, 2008 07:40 PM |
Our team arrived at the ranch today and begin the check-in process with the NASC headquarters. We have also had the pleasure of meeting the other teams. Everyone here has been fantastic; all of the teams want to help each other out and make sure that everyone finishes the race if possible.
We met the team from the University of Michigan, who are generally expected to win. They brought their own semi truck all decked out with their logos (but I doubt they will win the green caravan award). There are several teams that are traveling in style with very well decorated trailers.
The team from England (Durham University) is in a similar situation as we are regarding funding and experience. We are slightly better off as we are from America, but all of the teams including us are lending a hand to make sure that they succeed. We have offered Hai Yue's welding services for certain and we are trying to help them get insurance.
Our team is working to attach all of the last things that need to be attached to the car and are replacing bits that were already added but are sub-optimal. Carl VanWormer is helping brainstorm for and fix a problem of our battery ventilation using about 1/10 the amount of energy that our array outputs (wrong fan!) and Stephen Van Buskirk has put together some sweet LED lights for blinkers, brake lights, and a strobe. We have decided to change our driver ventilation for a more direct route to the face. Hai Yue, Jason, and Carl are still working on the computer to processor communication for the BMS, but they are doing well.
All in all I think we are doing well. We are setting up camp at the ranch, where we will be staying all week. Most of the teams are very impressed with the trailer that Ben made in three days last week; we have five sleeping bunks on the top that we can fit nearly half our team into! The rest of us are in tents nearby.
Thanks to everyone who has been supporting us! We're still working hard and we look forward in representing Oregon in this race! |
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Arriving inTexas
Sunday July 6, 2008 09:55 AM |
| The team is arriving together in Texas today. We have three vehicles arriving from Amarillo today and three more people flying in. The solar car is just a couple hundred miles from Dallas, thanks to three very patient and hard working team members who have been driving 45 mph with the trailer to keep the solar car safe. Ben, Justin, and Ram have tirelessly been driving for nearly twice as long each day as the rest of the cars. Our thanks to them! |
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Leaving Las Vegas
Friday July 4, 2008 03:30 PM |
This is Kathy's sister, Becky.
Kathy called and said that the truck left earlier and the rest of them were leaving then, at 3:07pm, for Albuquerque, NM.
Aparently it gets cooler as they go east toward NM and the three people in the truck wanted to get out of the 111 degree F heat. They expect Albuquerque to be in the high 60's by the time they drive the 575 miles, and its highs are only in the low 90's. I wish I could be there! : ) |
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Continuing on
Thursday July 3, 2008 03:37 PM |
| We have decided to bypass the RV because we cannot get it legally licensed in time with the holiday tomorrow. We are taking off now to head toward Vegas or Kingsman. We are taking the Cooley's 8 person van. |
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Things are picking up!
Thursday July 3, 2008 02:27 PM |
Today is Thursday the 3rd of July and we need to be in Texas by 9am on Monday the 7th. We spent yesterday in Cottage Grove, OR with a broken motor home and a trailer that was missing one wheel. The mechanics in Cottage Grove were phenomenal. We couldn't fix the motor home in time or under budget (one week and $1400 was going to be too much), so we had to leave it at a friend's house. Stormin' Norman has been incredible to us; he bailed us out in the dark when a wheel flew off of the trailer. The next day Jim's Tires fixed up the trailer for only $35. Ben Grimes on our team drove up with Justin Geffre to Salem to get a truck to pull the trailer- thanks to Ben's family! We had to transfer everything and everyone into the truck and the Prius; we had exactly 10 people and 10 seatbelts and everyone has been packed in tight since last night. The truck and trailer went straight to Las Vegas, as they were moving slower, and the Prius went to the Cooley's place in Pleasanton, CA to get another vehicle from Sarah Cooley's family. Bob and Jane have been caring for us since 5am. We were all set to pick up their van and head on our way when we got a call from Ron Meyers saying that he has a motor home that we can use in Sacramento. We are leaving now to pick up that motor home and we anticipate that we will have to bring it to Les Schwab to have the tires and batteries looked over to make sure it's ready for the trip. This vehicle was driven without problem six months ago, so we only anticipate that the battery may need a charge or replacement. Once we have arranged the transportation we will be headed to Vegas to meet up with the others! Thank you to everyone who has been supportive of us!
We have had several requests for information on how you can help. If you want to make a donation to our team you can send checks to:
Solar Vehicle Team
103 Memorial Union Box #492
Oregon State University
Corvallis, OR 97331
Thank you! |
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Welcome!
Wednesday July 2, 2008 08:20 PM |
| Welcome to the OSU Solar Vehicle Team website. Soon our team will be heading to Texas to begin the American Solar challenge; a 2,400 mile race which will put our vehicle through the test! |
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