North Americal Solar Challenge

[Steven Fahey]

Keep your eyes out for the solar race if it passes through your town.

http://americansolarchallenge.org/

The race starts in Plano, Texas, on the 13th of July and makes its way north to Calgary, Alberta on the 22nd.

Many teams are still scrambling to solve technical problems, but the U of C team has already passed technical inspection and can start qualifying laps tomorrow.

http://www.ucalgary.ca/blogs/solarteam

[Steven Fahey]

Many teams, having finished their inspections, are now qualifying for the race itself, on the 3 kilometer track.

The University of Calgary's Schulich 1 finished qualifying yesterday, and is still on the track, trying to earn the pole position.

http://wcmprod1.ucalgary.ca/blogs/files/blogs/images/IMG_6214.img_assist_custom.JPG

STF

[Steven Fahey]

No easy start for the racers today: Off the starting line most of the drivers discovered their batteries draining away, as clouds rolled over the sky. The teams did not make it to the first optimistic destinations, and settled for shorter drives, to conserve power, and hopefully leave room to make some reasonable distance, if Tuesday is cloudy too.

Some pictures from yesterday's qualifying laps:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3041/2660428154_f7cf4cd67c.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3256/2660428562_087660f8c5.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3171/2659600853_8129735a3e.jpg

[Steven Fahey]

The second day of racing has been daunting for many teams, like Red River College and the University of Minnesota, who have been suffering from various failures that are costing them large amounts of time. These fast competitors have dropped back to the middle of the pack, while other "slower and steadier" teams like University of Calgary have been gaining places.

[Rob Beckers]

Nice pics Steve! Must be tremendous fun to build and race a car like that.
Are these just US teams, or from all over the world? I.e. like the solar car race in Australia.

-RoB-

[Steven Fahey]

..like the solar car race in Australia...

Lots of countries involved, not just the US and Canada. There's a beautiful entry from Germany (a yellow "Pacman" - you get it when you see the top raised) and an entry from Britain's Durham University (not the Durham in Ontario).

I'm a Calgarian, so I'm boosting for the University of Calgary team, of course.
My son and I want to be present for the arrival. Calgary has crawled up to 7th place (middle of the pack). Their car is almost fast enough to travel at the highest speed limits, however with low light they pay a bigger penalty in speed than other teams. Some cars can roll faster on cloudy days than others, and these have become the leaders after a couple of couldy days. This may keep Calgary in the middle of the pack, unless really good weather and a bit of good luck help them make up some ground on the leaders.

I don't have any affiliation with the team. Just wanted to raise awareness of the race (every little bit helps). I'm not one to do the blog thing, so this site sounded like the perfect place to put a few pictures up.

[Steven Fahey]

Calgary is still in 7th place, but the pack is thinning out? Queens U seems to be out of contention, now. Waterloo is still doing well.



Timing Data as of evening of 17 July 2008 - detailed stage stop data coming soon

Rank Car Number Team Name Total Time

1 2 University of Michigan 22:15:52
2 32 Principia College 22:37:15
3 1 FH Bochum Solar Car Team 25:23:41
4 24 University of Waterloo 27:26:41
5 35 University of Minnesota 28:18:27
6 42 Missouri University of Science and Technology 28:32:39
7 65 University of Calgary 30:50:54
8 95 Red River College 34:01:57
9 9 Iowa State University 39:28:01
10 3 University of Kentucky 40:11:04
11 8 University of Arizona 42:38:32
12 100 Queen's University
13 11 Northwestern University
14 256 Oregon State University
15 175 Durham University

[Rob Beckers]

No Dutch teams in this race unfortunately! (I'm Dutch originally, and a Dutch team won the last Australian solar race). Looking at the route schedule they are due in Sioux Falls today, about halfway through now. I passed by that town just a few weeks ago on our trans-America trip, flat, flat, flat over there. The mid-west.

Keep the news coming Steven!

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

For those that are into technical details: The most popular motor for solar cars seems to be the CSIRO kit (http://www.csiro.au/resources/pf11g.html). They claim 95% - 99% efficiency! At around $12,000 it's not cheap. It's essentially a permanent magnet alternator that's used in reverse (then again, there are those that'll say a PM alternator is just a motor used in reverse).

-RoB-