"Holy Cheat" in the "World Solar Challenge"

The car was shipped to Australia by agents in Japan.We thought it should get to Darwin with 3 weeks to spare.Well it was not quite like that,somehow the box left Japan 2 weeks late and got further delayed by a typhoon and the ship was boarded by pirates!Fortunately the container the car was in was not opened.(I understand the main target of such attacks is consumer electronics.)

The flight out was pretty uneventful although top marks to the steward who marked the crossing of the equator by presenting Anne and me with glasses of Champagne.Darwin airport is tiny compared with what we are used to,even so the information counter was staffed at 5 o'clock in the morning.We flew through customs formalities by the simple expedient of having lost the wheels from the luggage,by the time that had been reported the customs man wanted to go home and waved us through.

Emerging into a tropical night was a pleasant shock to the system.After dumping bags and things at the Darwin Hotel we encounted the advance party,Julian Coates waiting for the customs agent to go and find our box.It was waiting at the pier for us and had to be opened for a brief customs inspection.There was then a wait back at the Hotel for transport to the showground for the box.At the showground we encounted other teams and were able to get on with assembly quite quickly.

Len and Maureen,the Australian team members introduced themselves and set to with the domestic arrangements.I got interviewed by a young lady from ABC and was broadcast in the morning on national radio.( As always I frightfully fluffed answering the question about why I was entering this thing and spending my own money-denying the sponsorship culture feels frightfully like being some sort of heretic.)

We changed the gearing to a value more suitable for tarmac,changed the front wheel bearings after some discussion,and had to put in a box for Julian's ballast (20 kgs. of weight lifters weights which we had somehow or other got out from England without paying excess baggage).



Scrutineering was across from the hall where we had assembled the vehicle but being number 4 we were the first not coming in from the main road and after being told they were ready for us we couldn't find any way through,eventually gates were unlocked.

The only difficulties we encountered were with the trailer hitch and the batteries,The trailer hitch was held in place with a "pip" pin as used on aircraft control locks and the vehicle examiners had never seen one before and didn't believe it was up to the job.I pointed out it had already driven a considerable distance on a Japanese beach and if it gave trouble I would replace it with a nut and bolt.(How would they have reacted to one of the entrants in Japan that used such a pin to hold his wheel on?)



The fifteen single battery cells supported in polyurethane foam caused David Rands,the battery guru, some concern.He thought they might get too hot and explode-at his pleading I visited Tandy's and got a temperature probe. There were all sorts of games with string and seals and drilling holes in the battery box to prevent changing cells and cheating.When we went to put it back together we discovered we couldn't because the pipe for the air horn had got involved as well,we re-did the air horn.

The registration remained "SUN 20" as before.There was $1000 the shippers wanted in cash but it turned out that an English cheque card will win money from an Australian hole-in-wall.



The final bit was a couple of days later when I drove out to "Hidden Valley" race circuit to do speed,stability and brake tests.Somehow in doing the front wheel bearings the brakes had become unadjusted so it was pulling to one side.Attempts to adjust it there didn't work but I managed to pass with a working brake on only one wheel out of 5.(The celebrated Australian "Aurora" team failed the brake test and scratched from the event!)I drove a couple of feet from a passing road train with no problem.(Anne asked if I really had to go that close.)I blew the speed test because of stopping early in the measured section to turn off the track-this just meant starting from the back of the grid,not really a problem in a transcontinental race but the Swiss who did the same thing negotiated a re-run to put them on the front of the grid.

Julian drove "Holy Cheat" back to the showground and we then went to collect the pickup that was to carry the shipping box across Australia and act as following support vehicle.Then all that was left to do was get the empty shipping box put on (a bunch of healthy looking rubber-neckars showed up at just the right time) take the "ute" back to Territory Rentals to have the indicators fixed and get back to the hotel to go across the road to Government House for a reception followed by the drivers briefing down the road.



The start was at 8 o'clock the following day so Julian and I went down to the "Ute" at daybreak to get the solar car from the showground and drive it back to the start line.The ute wouldn't start,it just went click and the lights went out-panic but it turned out that a battery terminal was loose and a bit of fiddling got it going.Being right at the back I found out that the start had happened by everyone else starting to move.What a game! I managed to pass a couple of vehicles and found myself driving almost alone between rows of cheering crowds that went on and on and on for more than an hour.


Liz.(English team member who arrived after us) driving the ute with Sven the observer and Len,Maureen,Anne and Julian in Len's fwd joined me on as I passed back by the Showground.I did drive for quite a while with one of the solar cyclist sat just behind the solar panel in front of the escort-I was glad when he eventually cleared off as a sudden stop would have made a nasty mess on my panel.


After 2 hours as prearranged it was Julian's turn to drive and we stopped and changed over with the appropriate ballast added for Julian.We found ourselves passing a few at the roadside such as Northern Territory University and an Italian team who we passed as they were organising a lift up the hill for their vehicle.Particularly difficult to pass was the Malaysian team who were moving slowly along the road but with 34 team members had a large number of support vehicles and getting our 3 vehicle convoy past their dozen vehicle convoy was quite an exercise.When we were changing drivers again in a fairly relaxed fashion there came a shout of "Here come the Malaysians" and it was all panic to get directly on the road in front of them and not have to go through all that business again.

About 2 o'clock clouds started to appear in the sky and in spite of the flat appearance on the maps there certainly seemed to be hills and each time I started up one of these a cloud slid across the sun and the ammeter jumped round onto the discharge side.By now the battery was quite discharged and you crawled under the cloud towards tantalizing sunlit patches further down the road.Once in the sun climbing the hills was o.k. but the speed was quite slow.Come ten to five in the afternoon the battery was flat ,the sun was hiding and it was uphill,we had covered 207 km. and stopped.



Liz wanted to sleep in a real bed so she drove 18 km. onto Pine Creek leaving the rest of us to cook,make camp etc.One of the 648 cells had a chip out of it By moving the car over to the western side of the road the slope down titled the array more towards the sun giving maybe 9 amps which fell away as the sun descended.Even with a similar game on the eastern side in the morning I don't think we recovered as much as 50 % of the charge in the 700 Whr. battery.



During the evening we had lots of visitors,a girls school,the Ferrari Pinochio solar cycle team,a bunch of Hawaian filmakers who I'd been talking to by fax. , a Japanese solar cyclist who finished his day's run at our campsite and Hans Throlstrup,organiser of the event to check that every thing was o.k. The flies were hell until dark when they went to bed.I must have had a busy day as I crashed out with sheet sleeping bag and ground sheet and was only woken by the morning shift of flies intimidating me.

Setting off at 8 o'clock the first hour the solar panel was sort of on half power but from 9 till about 2 it seemed to be giving about 30 amps into the 28 volt battery.On a level road that had us moving at about 36 km./hr.neither charging or discharging the battery,but what with hills and poor light the average comes down to about 24 km/hr.-not good enough to arrive in Adelaide and catch our flights home!Oh! Looking at the way the current rose as you increased speed the cause was aerodynamic and we had a drag area of about 1 square metre-the trailer was obviously extremely draggy.


We reached the media stop at Katherine at lunch time but turning into this service station I had the tow car on an adverse gradient and it fell over,breaking 2 cells on the trailer and reaaranging an indicator and stop light.We changed the damaged solar panel for the spare and continued.

That night we stopped at Mataranka in a motel,we had covered a further 213 km.Neville Baxter from New Zealand was there with the kit of parts that never quite became a solar cycle.He was taking the machine to Adelaide and planning to have it ready for the Adelaide-Melbourne race in January. (Neville was in my team in 1993.)



We drove off again at 8 o'clock to repeat a similar routine to the previous day.The events of the day were a couple of near-misses with willy-willy's and a trailer puncture in the afternoon.We propped the trailer up on a piece of handy termite mound while I rumaged in the box for a new tyre and tube.We covered 212 km. and ended up at the road house at Dunmara.The progress was very consistent but too slow to get to Adelaide in time for people's return trips,so the decision was made to finish at Dunmara.I withdrew from the race on the back of a Dunmara postcard.

Anne decided she wanted use the tent we had won in Japan.We understood it to be a 2-person tent-something had gone awry in translation.It was vast-dozens of tubes,multiple layers of fabric and a set of instructions in Japanese.Fortunately Sven's day job included building work and 4 of us managed to get it up in about half an hour.The Malaysian team appeared in the evening having given up further north.



In the morning Detlef Schmitz appeared with his vehicle-he was making similar speed to ourselves but with various breakdowns mostly tyre troubles.It turned out that the tyres that were giving him trouble were the same size as our reliable ones so I sold him some.(I later learned ours were just as much trouble,I think he was using undersize rims,a common problem with the present confused state of bicycle tyre sizes.)



We spent the morning derigging the trailer,boxing up the panels and putting it all back in the shipping container.We then drove on stopping overnight at Tenant Creek,Alice Springs and Coober Pedy.We found the "Mad Dog" team from South Bank University at Cadny Homestead still running.

I was the passenger in the "ute" with Liz driving south of Port Augusta when we heard a muffled bang.After a bit of discussion we decided to stop and take a look,discovering 2 panels from the box had blown away but we found them and managed to resecure the box,apparently without loosing anything.Slightly different timing and bits of errant box would have hit one of the French solar cars.


We were in Adelaide for the last finisher,"Mad Dog" and to go to the party.The next "World Solar Challenge" is in 1999;-




The Solar car in The Royal Institution