American Solar Challenge 2003
During the second week of May, five intrepid young UC Berkeley engineers traveled to Kansas to enter CalSol's new car, Solar Bear, in its first race. Formula Sun Grand Prix is the qualifier for American Solar Challenge 2003, which will be held in July, but is also an independent race. Cars built by Universities all over the country entered to race around a 2.1 mile track at Heartland Park Topeka.
This is a brief overview of CalSol's experiences during the event...
Day 0: Friday, May 9 - Preparations for leaving...
We spent all night Friday finishing up last minute improvements to the car and sorting out the gear that would have to be taken with us. Solar Car vets Martin and Mike were nice enough to drop by and give us some last minute advice before we headed out.
Day 1: Saturday, May 10 - Packing and driving...
Early Saturday morning we started packing the great 15 passenger van that Hertz Equipment Rentals was nice enough to let us borrow.
We loaded the Solar Car into the trailer, tied it down, and set off on our adventure. We had five people on our Formula Sun Team: Yuk Fai Tham (Solar Car Driver), Jason Huey (Solar Car Driver), Jeremy Huff (Mechanical), John Connors (Electrical), and Nathan Mandernach (Team Captain).
We traveled past Lake Tahoe and out of the great state of California and into Nevada. Nevada is a very wide state and there isn't much to see.
That evening we entered Utah but it was dark out so we didn't see much of it.
Day 2: Sunday, May 11 - More driving and arrival at the track...
We entered Colorado just before sunrise. Its a pretty state but it was very interesting to tow a solar car trailer over the Rockies. The highest elevation we reached was just over 10,000 feet near Vail.
We entered Kansas in the early afternoon and by sunset we were at the track. It took 36 hours of straight driving to get to Kansas. The track didn't open until Monday morning so we found a nice place with light and we borrowed some electricity from an outlet we found to do a little work as we waited for other teams to arrive.
Day 3: Monday, May 12 - Setup and first day of scrutineering...
At 6 am, the gates were opened and all the teams rushed to grab space on the track infield. We picked a lovely corner of the central parking lot and setup our gear.
All of the other teams had more people than us, the next smallest team had around 12-15 people and many had 20-30, so most of the teams brought more gear and some had semi's to haul everything in.
On this first day we had our mechanical systems inspected and we passed. The inspector had a few comments about things he'd like to see changed a little bit but there was nothing too serious. We also went to the array station where they gave us some really nice I-V curves for each of our array strings. We did some general work to get the car ready for the rest of the inspections on Tuesday.
Day 4: Tuesday, May 12 - Second day of scrutineering...
We started the day at 7am with the body and sizing and electrical inspections. We did fairly well but our brake lights weren't working and one part of the electrical system was wired incorrectly so we had to make a few changed but both issues were easy to fix.
Unfortunately, it started raining hard, got really windy, and there was a lot of lightning so it made working on the car a bit more exciting. We corrected the issues and had them checked. The rain stopped and the sun came out so we had a beautiful afternoon to do the dynamic tests. The car must pass a figure-8 and braking test before it can enter the track. It took us a couple of tries but the car passed with no real issues.
In the evening, they lined up all the teams for the official event photo.
Day 5: Wednesday, May 13 - First day of racing...
The cars lined up for a 9 am start to Formula Sun Grand Prix on a sunny day perfect for solar racing.
Our brake lights wouldn't turn off so we pitted after 2 laps to fix the problem. After putting in about 10 laps, we pitted again to do a general mechanical check, make sure everything was working well, and secure some wires that had gotten loose. After this pit, we ran well for the rest of the day. Many teams had big problems with their cars on this day and for the most part, there were just 2 or 3 cars circling the track at any time. Solar Bear was one of them.
We had one person driving the car, one person recovering from driving the car in the pit, two people in the pit to deal with issues as they arose and one person in the timing tent keeping track of number of laps and time for each lap. The timing tent was a great place to sit and watch the race but Jeremy took it a bit to seriously at times...
To qualify for ASC, the cars had to do 67 laps (140 miles) in one day. We qualified on the first day, the forth team overall to qualify and the first team in our class. The other teams helped cheer Yuk Fai on as he completed the qualifying lap since we only had two team members available at the time.
At the end of a long day of racing, we set the array up to charge the batteries.
Then we relaxed as we waited for the sun to go down.
That night, we treated our selves to a shower in a motel room, the first shower we'd gotten since Thursday night. It was very refreshing.
Day 5: Thursday, May 14 - Second day of racing...
We got up early to set the array out for more charging and do some mechanical inspections of the car to make sure everything was still secure from the previous day of racing.
It was overcast so we didn't get quite as much power from the array as we would have liked but the car worked well. We pushed the car a bit more and went a little faster. We had to make one cold pit to change a tire but for the most part we didn't have any serious problems. There wasn't much to do so we stood around waiting for most of the day. We nearly doubled the number of laps we did on the previous day so we were at about 300 miles.
At the end of the day, we started to get lonely because of our small team so we began abducting people from other teams and forcing them to join CalSol. It was working great until the other teams, with their superior numbers, overwhelmed us and rescued their personnel.
Day 6: Friday, May 15 - Last day of racing
We got up and found that it was pouring outside.
We duct taped the electrical compartments and decided to go ahead and drive the car for a while to see what would happen. Yuk Fai volunteered to drive. The result: the car and Yuk got wet, really, really wet, but there were no significant problems and the car handled well. We did 5 laps and then pitted to keep Yuk from freezing to death and to dry off the car. We were one of only 4 teams to drive in the rain. Since it didn't look like it would clear up, we packed everything up into the trailer and went to IHOP to dry off.
We had some time to kill before the awards ceremony in the evening so we went to explore Topeka, Kansas. We went to the capital building and explored anywhere that didn't have a locked door. We went to museums, and in general, left our mark wherever we could. Go Bears!
We went back for the free pizza and awards. We placed first in our class and fourth overall! Not bad for the smallest team that had come the farthest distance, made up entirely of rookies and driving a relatively untested car with no speedometer or instrumentation of any kind.
We were tired after a long week so we thought what better time to start the 1800 mile trip back than right away. We said goodbye to our new friends from other schools and headed back to the bay area. It took 38 hours to get back, including one flat tire on the trailer, but we made it back on Sunday morning and finals didn't even start until Monday!
To see more photos, check out our Photos section.