After spending the previous day performing tests at the Royal Flying Doctor Service’s emergency landing airstrip, we set out this morning for Adelaide and the finish of our Mock Race. Our starting location was approximately 50 km north of Glendambo, leaving us around 670 km (418 mi) from the finish of timing outside Adelaide. We started at 8:00 AM with sunny skies at last–quite a relief after the weather of previous days.

Although we had only a small amount of energy left from the three cloudy days before, along with a threat of more clouds in the afternoon, we were able to cruise at over 90-95 km/hr (56-59 mph) in the morning. Thanks to the forecasts of our meteorologist, Chris McMeeking, we were able to track the clouds well ahead of Infinium. In the afternoon, when we were sure that we would not run into significant cloud cover, we started to cruise near the speed limit of 110 km/hr (69 mph). After three days of miserable weather, it was encouraging to be able to travel closer to race speeds.

We hit our control points in Glendambo and Port Augusta, and finished at the end of timing outside Adelaide with time to spare before the end of the race day. Best of all, we had perfect reliability on the car, with no time on the side of the road! Each of the divisions on our Race Crew truly deserves praise for their part in today’s success: Engineering, for ensuring the car was reliable enough to last through the grueling mock race; Strategy, for tracking such unpredictable weather and managing our batteries through the cloudy days; and Operations, for keeping our whole team going through five long days and four nights in the Outback’s ever-changing conditions.

With exactly three weeks until the Global Green Challenge starts, we have readied Infinium and ourselves for the trials of the Outback and will now turn our focus to the final details of our race preparations.

-Steve Hechtman, Race Manager

After camping overnight in Cadney Homestead, we finally woke up to the end of the rain that had drenched us the day before. Despite the drying weather, however, the sky was still blanketed by clouds. The continued cloudines meant that we would not get a good charge while driving for the third day in a row. Once again, we decided to alter our course so we could make the most out of our practice race.

Today, rather than trying again for the border, we headed south for half a day, carefully managing the remaining charge in the battery pack. After passing our first control stop at Coober Pedy, we continued on towards a long, flat and straight portion of the Stuart Highway that doubles as an emergency landing strip for the Royal Flying Doctors Service. Ending our racing at noon, we took the remainder of the day to prepare for tomorrow’s testing on the airstrip. Running on this section of the highway will give us a chance to do some valuable experiments that would not be possible on a typical oval race track or public highway.

After tomorrow’s testing, we will drive Infinium back to Adelaide on Sunday, our last day of the 5-day event. This will be a full-day run that we hope should mirror the weather and pace of the race in October. Despite the three constant days of clouds, as well as rainfall levels that happen only once every two decades, we have added a considerable amount of test mileage to Infinium. Equally important, we are now even more prepared for even the oddest of occurences in the outback, and have two more days to prepare for even more!

Starting the day in Port Augusta, Infinium was tested through the rain for two hours. The jet stream had swept some moisture down from the tropics, bringing steady showers across the race route. In order to stay on schedule, at noon the team decided to pack up Infinium and trailer north to Cadney Homestead. Tomorrow morning, the team will continue north towards the Northern Territory border. According to the team’s meteorologist, the weather system should clear out overnight giving the team clear weather in the morning.

 

Josh drys off after being caught in the rain

 

Infinium being loaded into the semi trailer

 

 

With our race day starting in 30 minutes, there are still clouds in the sky, though rain that moved in overnight has let up for now. We don’t expect too much rain today, but there should be clouds all the way to our next stop, Glendambo. The weather vehicle we are in is rolling out now, so this is all for our brief update!

The team’s Australian Mock Race started today from the outskirts of Adelaide, South Australia. While the Global Green Challenge will start from Darwin in the Northern Territory and end in Adelaide, race regulations prevent us from traveling on the race route in the Northern Territory before the race. Therefore, our Mock Race is from Adelaide to the Northern Territory border and back, a distance of 2435 kilometers (over 1500 miles).

Today’s race day started just after 11 AM–while the first day of the race starts at 9:00 AM, we were delayed in our car preparations due to our batteries not arriving from the US until Monday. Nevertheless, we started out from Adelaide and were instantly met with cloudy weather. Starting with a full battery pack, we were able to move at a reasonable pace; however, with no end to the clouds in sight, we had to move forward cautiously. It would be unfortunate to run out of energy in our batteries before we could get to the sun of the Australian outback to recharge.

This being our first running of the car in Australia, we did run into a number of minor electrical gremlins that put us on the side of the road three times, and had to bleed our brake system while pulled over as well. The likely cause of the electrical problems, a loose connection within our battery control modules, was diagnosed while examining the batteries at the end of the day, so we hope not to encounter this problem again tomorrow.

As we neared Port Augusta, the edge of the continent, we finally managed to escape the clouds. Unfortunately, the sky refused to clear up–sand and dust, kicked up by the wind, blanketed the sky and prevented us from getting any sunlight. We could see clear blue at the top of the sky, though the sand still blocked the sun.

Our Mock Race progress for day one.

We pulled into Port Augusta at 4:42 PM and ended the race day at 5:10 PM, having served 28 minutes of our 30-minute control stop. Our late start, the clouds and sand, and gremlins on the car all prevented us from getting as far as we had wished. Fortunately, we still have a good amount of charge left in our battery pack and are nearing the end of the sandstorms. For those who are curious, sand storms that passed through Port Augusta last week were part of the same system that blanketed Sydney with sand last week:

We will start tomorrow morning at 8:10 AM, and will serve the final two minutes of our control stop before leaving for Glendambo. We hope for less sand and fewer clouds tomorrow, though right now the weather does not look too promising.

-Steve Hechtman, Race Manager
Posted from the Port Augusta McDonalds, one of the few businesses in Australia with free wi-fi

A bonus video with a very appropriate title, a favorite of the Continuum team:

Today the Race Crew in Australia left the comfort of Prince Alfred College in Adelaide to begin a practice race across the outback. Over the course of this week, the team will race Infinium on The Stuart Highway from Adelaide to the border of the Northern Territory and back. The mock race will give them one last chance to practice caravan maneuvers, race strategy, and quick vehicle maintenance on the side of the road. Most importantly, it will confirm the team’s expectations of the vehicle as they will be in full race mode, ensuring Infinium is reliable for the World Solar Challenge. While the team is traveling through the outback, internet will be few and far between, but there should be an update every night on the team’s progress. The team should already be on the road right now, so let’s wish them a safe and successful trip.

View of Infinium from the Lead, with Chase and the Semi Trailer in tow.

Lower surface of Infinium sits while the team charges at LeRoy JrSr High in LeRoy, Illinois

Team members (bottom to top) Eric Relson, Gerald Chang, Santosh Kumar, Dylan Keefe-Reitzell, and Sudeep Rohatgi hold the upper surface while charging at Saint Joseph’s High School in South Bend, Indiana.

After four days of mock race, covering over 750 miles across four states, the team is now making our return trip to Ann Arbor. With less than a week until our semi trailer leaves for Australia by boat, we have elected to forgo the final day of practice in order to ready ourselves for shipping out to Australia. We are all very pleased by the way Infinium and the team have performed on our mock race. Over the course of the past four days we have ironed out many of the kinks in our daily routines, fine-tuned our racing strategies, and have almost doubled the miles on Infinium to improve its reliability.

After our semi trailer ships at the end of this month, we will have all of August to test Infinium before it leaves for Australia in early September. Once in Australia, we will have one more dress rehearsal for the World Solar Challenge in the form of an additional mock race through the Outback. After the intense racing practice of this past week, we are one giant step closer to being prepared for the World Solar Challenge; with 93 days until WSC, we will have plenty of time to make the final leap.

After escaping some early morning fog, the team has made good pace down the road. We left LeRoy, Illinois in the morning and have already reached our control stops in Bloomington, Illinois, and Kankakee, Illinois. We pulled in to the stop in Kankakee just before 1:00 PM EDT and hope to make it to South Bend by the end of the race day at 5:00 PM EDT. Of course, we hope that the home of the Fighting Irish (Notre Dame) will treat us well despite the fact that we are wearing the colors of one of their biggest football rivals!

Update: We have ended the day in South Bend, Indiana, one block to the west of the Notre Dame campus, and only a few miles west of our control stop. We will spend the night in South Bend before leaving for our next stop in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

After an abbreviated race day, the team is now in LeRoy Illinois, between our checkpoints of Effingham, IL and Bloomington, IL. In the morning, the team opted to start the day late for strategic reasons, then took advantage of the early afternoon to perform modifications and maintenance on the suspension and motor.

We set out from Effingham at 2:30 PM, but were met with cloudy skies and scattered showers. However, we were able to navigate the showers thanks to our Meteorologist, Chris McMeeking. On Tuesday afternoon, heading into Effingham, we managed to dodge storms on our way into the checkpoint:

The team dodges storms on its way into Effingham, IL (represented by the red dot on the map)

Tomorrow we will leave for Bloomington, IL with a careful eye on the weather. We hope to avoid any further rain while crossing back into Indiana and Michigan.