Our preparations for the race are in full swing as we now are less than two weeks away from leaving for Texas and the 2010 North American Solar Challenge. One of the most important recent developments is that the car has been painted! It is now completely white, which not only makes it look even better, but also helps us get even more power from the solar cells. New sponsorship logos will be added soon to both the car and the trailer.

After taking a day off for on Saturday, the team was back at work Sunday. We set up a mock scrutineering course on campus and had our drivers begin getting familiar with the required tasks, which include a slalom and figure 8. Unfortunately, we keep running into an issue where the motor would shut off whenever the drivers accelerated strongly. We were unable to fix it on the spot, but continued testing at relatively low speeds.

The team gathered early on Monday ready to hit the open road. Unfortunately, mother nature had other plans. A series of storms forced us inside our garage for most of the morning. This did give us a chance to apply new weatherproofing to the car and finish some debugging. Early in the afternoon, we were finally able to set out. We did some telemetry and acceleration testing in a nearby parking lot before heading out on the open road. The day was quite productive both in terms of helping us identify and solve problems and getting the drivers some experience.

-Michael Sherer