7.14 Departure

The team left Port Ewen at 7:30 AM for Laguardia. It was a long wait at the airport which offered us time to have lunch, socialize, and find Pokémon.   Mr. Harris met us when we landed in Dallas/Fort Worth and we had a busy afternoon checking in  and attending meetings. Team members worked well after dark in the parking lot at our hotel making adjustments to the car.  

There are not only rules related to the race, but precise specifications on components of the car: wiring, length, housing for batteries, safety stickers, etc.  Shown below are team members and teachers looking over information necessary to the car and race. Vehicle documentation and specifications were carefully looked at by students and teachers. 

All of the teams met in a large banquet hall for the welcome meeting.  Roll call was taken and each of the twenty one teams proudly shouted as their school names were called. President Lehman Marks of the Solar Car Challenge gave a motivational speech to the participants in which he emphasized the importance of good sportsmanship and the amazing experience that the race will be. 

Teams then divided themselves into three groups: safety, navigation, and scrutineering. These groups each had their own meetings where they listened to experienced speakers talk about the importance of the specific skill. Ulster BOCES team members focusing on navigation are Jackie (lead), Elijah, and Marisa. Nic, Chris, and Cameron will guide us on safety. One safety representative will ride in the passenger seat of the electric solar car throughout the trip. Scrutineering will be overseen by Steve and Alex.  Scurtineering will take place over the next two days. We will be in the car bays at the Texas Motor Speedway thoroughly going through every aspect of the car. We have to present our car at eight different scrutineering stations. At the stations, judges will ask the students specific questions and look to see that components are correctly in place. Sample questions from the book are, "The car is equipped with a roll cage that encompasses the entire driver and is a fixed integral part of the solar car structure", "Steering critical points are lock-nutted, double-nutted, or otherwise secured.", "Are the students adequately able to answer judges’ questions concerning the principles and operation of the mechanics of the car?". If you are interested in knowing more about scrutineering, check out the questions.  Below is a sampling of the various meetings that students attended.

 After the meetings, team members made their way to the hotel parking lot, removed the car from the trailer, and began working well into dark on the car. Dinner was a late night sandwich run. 

Chris is removing battery terminals so that required covers can be placed on them. 

Nic spent a great deal of time with the flashlight feature on his phone and the heat gun—finishing up the body covering that he began the last day in Port Ewen. 

I was the only one who was able to spend a few minutes away from the preparations of the race. I discovered graceful rows of cypress trees with hundreds of cicadas in their branches. The chorus they created was a wave of sound beginning with a faint sound in the distance, becoming a crescendo, and then receding. I found a young bull hereford grazing and a sad reminder of the recent tragedy in Dallas.