This past weekend, CalSol took a trip out to our composites shed for a hands-on training session focusing on composite layups. We had a really great turnout with new and older members from both the electrical and mechanical teams coming out to learn about a process essential to making a competitive solar car. The session …
To carry on where yesterday’s blog post finished, the team left Tennant Creek with only thirty minutes left to race. As the team was preparing to leave the control stop, the Philippine team’s batteries caught on fire. By the time our team members saw what was happening they had already smothered the batteries with sand …
Today was the big day, for the first time in our team’s history, CalSol officially rayced in the World Solar Car Challenge. Once again, a huge thanks to all those who supported us: friends, family, and of course our sponsors. Without their support we certainly would not be here today. The team got an early …
Hi there, It’s Marc and Jessica again (I know right)! We have finally arrived in the Outback! Although its hard to say exactly when we did so because for some reason the border of this huge expanse isn’t marked by a huge billboard saying “Welcome to Nowhere”, I am pretty sure when you can drive …
Day 8: Red Sky in the Morning, Sailors Take Warning Read More »
Quick update from Jessica and Marc here. We took Captain BlueBear (aka the blue VW Golf Wagon TDI) and headed out towards South Australia intending to get Impulse registered to drive on SA roads and scouting out the drive to Adelaide for the rest of the team.
Just a quick update from the land across the sea. We had an extremely eventful day today. First, we picked up the awesome caravan of vehicles provided to us by Volkswagen. These included a Amarok Ultimate with 4 Motion(4WD), a TDI320 Caddy Maxi Life with 4 Motion, a second TDI320 Caddy Maxi Life, a T5 …
Like the voracious, magical semi-human fish creature from Disney’s Ponyo, CalSol loves HAM. No I am not talking about the meat product from a pig’s leg, I am talking about Amateur Radio. For those unfamiliar with it , Amateur Radio, aka Ham radio, is the use of various forms of radio communications(voice, image, text and data) over a …
Taking advantage of the 3 day weekend, the chassis team put in a 14hr work-session on Sunday to finish constructing the new chassis. CalSol is extremely excited by this development because it marks a significant step on the path to finishing Impulse. With the chassis built, we can finish working on the suspension, steering systems, …
This past week CalSol finally got around to testing the strength of the beams and welds that will be used in the next car. Thanks to the help of Scott McCormick and the rest of the guys in Hesse Hall we were able to use an Instron Universal Tester to gather some valuable data on …
Over the summer, CalSol spent some time down in the South Bay visiting Google and VW. After an early morning start, we headed down to Mountain View with GoldRush and TOD in tow to give a Tech Talk about Solar Car Racing at Google. Thanks to the hard work put in by the team all week long …
