Sent: Tuesday, June 02, 1998 4:46 PM Subject: [B*E*S*T] Excerpts from this year's Tour de Sol The NESEA Tour de Sol is the nation's largest electric car race. It is a 5-day cross-country rally from Boston to Washington DC. Here are some excerpts from this year's race in May: --------< begin included text >-------- Did I mention that it was wet for much of the Tour de Sol? The folks at BCIT had big plans for what they called the Eco Living Festival. There was music, provided by the Springfield Elementary School Band and then a disc jockey, and lunches served by the students in the Food Services program, and many school buses bringing students for tours of the electric vehicles. But it also rained much of the time we were there, sometimes very hard. Kathryn (Kate) Skelly is the daughter of Michael Skelly who is a member of the NESEA Board of Directors. She has been to many Tour de Sols, often helping out. This year, at the Burlington County (NJ) Institute of Technology she helped run the Eco Living Festival's "Junior Solar Sprint" races. For this event school kids are given a solar panel and a motor. And from these and whatever materials they can come up with, they are to devise a vehicle that will carry an empty soda can from the start line to the finish line following a guide wire. Normally this is done outside, in the sunlight. However, since it was pouring rain much of the day, they had a backup plan. "We covered the solar panel with a piece of foam core board rubber banded over it. Then we used two AA batteries to drive each of the cars." About 20 to 25 teams competed. "A lot of cars did very well, but a few did not even move." Which was the coolest car? "One, called the `The Blue Lightning Bolt', had a blue cover which was completely removable. About 30 small pieces of wood were glued together to make the chassis. The soda can sat inside, the cover went over that, and the solar panel, foam core, and battery pack went on top of that. It was cool because it didn't wobble, and it was like complicated, but like really simple." Sophisticated? "Sophisticated! I knew it was one of those words. I think it won for design. "There was another one that was just the solar panel, a piece of wood, a few wheels, and it went like _really_ fast and always got to the finish line like zooooom!" Kate didn't have a car of her own, because she was helping run the event. ... #97 `Project e- 2' suffered a blowout on the right (rear) tire when they ran over some "railroad sized rocks". Replacing the tube and tire took about half an hour. "After that, it was pretty clear sailing," said Robert Martin. It struck me that handling a Human-Electric Hybrid such as the `Project e-2' tricycle takes a bit of practice. On top of pedaling and steering, and two hand brakes, there is a button for a brake light, and a throttle control. So do you just pedal and add power, or just use power and pedal once in a while, or what? "You pedal and add power by turning on the throttle. It gives you an extra boost of energy and pushes you along a little faster. I got up to 28 or 30 miles per hour. I didn't really want to go too much faster than that (in this weather) for safety reasons." The trike rides very low, maybe 2 1/2 feet off the ground at the highest point. ... On Monday #93 `Helios the Heron V' was having trouble getting a good charge. [This car was built entirely by 4th-8th grade students - LH] But on Tuesday they made it to Dover with no difficulty. What made the difference? Teacher and technical advisor Topher Waring told me that they had found "a bad connection that we fixed. We have about 114 Volts left, which is pretty good. Dead is just about 100 Volts. We are not going to push our batteries, because we need to use them all winter." While I was talking with the Helios group, Ashley Roslund showed me their Battery Monitoring Panel. Inside a shallow wooden box are ten RJ-11 telephone jacks. Each jack is like the one on the wall at home that you plug your phone into. An RJ-11 plug, like the one on the end of your phone cord, is connected to a set of color coded screws: red, green, black, and yellow. "Each phone jack is hooked up to two batteries. When we plug into, say, number 10 like it is right now, we can take a small battery tester and hook it up to colored screws, and that lets us read the batteries. Yellow and green go to negative and black and red go to positive." I also wanted to see the "computer thingy with the light bulbs". "When we are charging, these make sure that we don't over charge the batteries, because if we do that we can kill a battery. Each computer chip has its own battery. We hook the positive and negative terminals on the computer chip to the positive and negative terminals on the battery. When the battery is fully charged, the light bulb will flash to use up the (excess) energy." I happen to know that the "computer chips" are sold under the name Rudman Regulators [these are the circuit boards I provided for each of our batteries - LH]. ... The above is copyright Michael H. Bianchi. Permission to copy is granted provided the entire article is presented without modification and this notice remains attached. For other arrangements, contact me at +1-973-822-2024. For more information on the American Tour de Sol, visit the web page at http://www.nesea.org Official American Tour de Sol information is available from the sponsor, the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) at 413-774-6051 and nesea@nesea.org . All media enquiries should be addressed to ... Jack Groh Groh Associates Sustainable Public Relations email: GrohPR@aol.com (401)732-1551 tel (401)732-0547 fax NATdS Report #63: Stopping Midway From Princeton to New Castle --------< end included material >-------- Lee Hart ************************************************************ Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 1998 10:20 PM Subject: [B*E*S*T] More reports from the Tour de Sol More comments from the `Helios the Heron' team of 4th-8th graders at the Tour de Sol: --------< begin included text >-------- Count on the kids from the `Helios the Heron' team to come up with interesting ideas. Teacher Karen Budde (Helios' driver) told me, "In the Holland Tunnel, my navigator says, `If we all drove electric vehicles, the Holland Tunnel would smell sweet.' Later, another pipes up, `If we all drove electric vehicles, we could get some sleep in New York City instead of listening to traffic noise all night.' "Last night we calculated that `Helios' was getting 120 miles per gallon equivalence. This from a 20-year-old VW microbus." The above is copyright Michael H. Bianchi. Permission to copy is granted provided the entire article is presented without modification and this notice remains attached. For other arrangements, contact me at +1-973-822-2024. For more information on the American Tour de Sol, visit the web page at http://www.nesea.org - - - - Official American Tour de Sol information is available from the sponsor, the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) at 413-774-6051 and nesea@nesea.org . All media enquiries should be addressed to ... Jack Groh Groh Associates Sustainable Public Relations email: GrohPR@aol.com (401)732-1551 tel (401)732-0547 fax --------< end included text >-------- Lee Hart