Going Fast, Going Smooth
While we’ve been staying at camping stops for the nights so far, today, we ended Day 4 of the race in a true Outback-camping style—stopped on the side of the Stuart Highway.
This morning, Astrum departed Marla at 8:03 am sharp. Within the first two hours of driving, we had to make two stops to look at the car. The driver was hearing an unexpectedly loud noise from inside the car, which we suspected was the same scrub issue that we faced yesterday. This returning scrub issue caused Astrum to consume more energy than it should.
When we stopped to fix this problem for the first time, we took off a part of the seals from the fenders to see if it was causing the problem. However, the sound did not go away even after this and the power number kept on dropping so we had to make another stop. This time, we took off all the seals, which seemed to resolve the issue.
After those stops, we drove smoothly for the rest of the day and managed to hit two control stops. The route we drove today was familiar to us since it was where we spent the majority of our mock race. At our first control stop, Coober Pedy, we encountered some other teams’ scout cars. The whole team was very used to the area, so we managed to pull the car to the most optimal spot for pointing the array. We even had some time to relax for a moment and do some spontaneous interviews for the local radio.
The second stop, Glendambo, went even better. We stayed at the Glendambo campsite for several days during the mock race, so we were very used to the landscape and its features. The only big difference was the weather. Today, there was a lot of wind blowing from the south towards Astrum. To protect the car from tipping over from the strong wind, all the team members had to form a half circle around it.
Soon after leaving the Glendambo control stop, we reached our end of day location. Unlike any other night that we had in the Outback during the race, today’s end of the day location is truly an uninhabited place. Halfway between Glendambo and Port Augusta, we needed to pull over and set up camp as it was already past 5 pm. When we did, we immediately noticed how strong the wind and soft the ground was. Because of the extreme weather and unusual ground, we experienced some problems setting up the tents and were a bit concerned about what would happen overnight, but we used rocks to secure them, hoping they will keep the tents from blowing away.
Overall, today was another day of a successful race. We not only avoided big issues with the car, but we also managed to intake the most amount of power with our array so far on race and drive a few dozen kilometers further than what we originally planned to be at. It was a quiet day, as we had not seen a single other solar car on the road nor passed one. However, as the saying goes, no news is good news. But tomorrow, we are expecting to bring some good news and cross the finish line with big smiles on our faces! Go Fast, Go Smooth, Go Blue!