Hello CalSol Enthusiasts!
My name is Abhay, and this is my first time writing a blog post! I haven’t had time to write them on the drive up from the south, but now that we are in Darwin, I have plenty!
Friday, October 7th was a big day for CalSol. We checked in to the Hidden Valley Motorsports Complex, where we and the rest of the teams competing in the World Solar Challenge will be working on our vehicles until scrutineering. We have a nice covered garage with more than enough room for Impulse and all our equipment.
Not all the teams have checked in, but all the teams here have welcomed us with open arms. Eclipse 7 Solar Car Team took a lot of time to show us around their car, Eclipse 7, and answer our questions. Principia Solar Team, who are fellow Americans hailing from Illinois, also talked to us and showed us their car, Ra 7s. University of Toronto Blue Sky Solar gave us some good tips on staying cool in the hot tropical Darwin weather. Hilary had a good time talking to fellow Canadians from all the different Canadian teams.
One of the more unique teams was Universidad de Chile, with their car Eolian. They had assembled two identical cars in a three month period: one car they raced last week in Chile and the other they cut up into three pieces and shipped here to Darwin. When we saw them they were in the process of reassembling their car!
We look forward to meeting with and talking to all the solar vehicle teams when they arrive!
Back in our own garage, we did some work on Impulse on the hope that we could get her back up and running soon. We re-routed cables and tested the start-up sequence to see if it worked properly after the work we did in Port Augusta. We also tested the dashboard to see if the received data from the Tritium. We have some more work to do on the software side to get Impulse up and running, but we are confident that we can get her going soon!
In addition to all the solar car excitement and meeting people from all over the world, the team went out for a nice dinner in downtown Darwin tonight. What a gooooood day!
Go Bears!