June 22 Team Meeting

It was a full day of progress on both fronts, with the McKee crew out at the shop and the Tech team holding things down back at school.

One of the first things we did today was seal the edges of the polycarbonate panels together using silicone. This creates a continuous surface across the array without locking the panels rigidly to each other, which matters because polycarbonate moves with temperature and you do not want to fight that.

The bigger structural milestone today was completing all of the array frame supports. We are calling them pillars, just like in a car. The A pillar sits at the very leading edge of the vehicle. The B pillar is at the top of the rollbar. The C pillar is a support roughly a foot behind the rollbar. The D pillar is all the way at the rear of the frame behind the back wheel. And then we have a final set of supports made from carbon fiber rods that we borrowed from the MIT solar car Gemini. Those rods are doing double duty — they will also serve as the support structure when the array tilts for charging. Per the rules, all equipment needed to pivot the array has to travel on the car itself, so having lightweight CF rods handle both jobs is a smart solution.

We laid the array frame across all five supports and it fit perfectly. After centering it up, we started fabricating small aluminum triangles to serve as the pivot points, drilling the holes through both the triangles and the array frame. We ran into a small snag — the range of motion was more limited than we wanted. Rather than tear everything apart, we made the call to design an offset pivot point with a rounded edge tomorrow that will give us the full 90 degrees of tilt we need for charging. Sometimes a clean workaround beats a rebuild.

We also spent time today doing a detailed analysis of the race route and the altitude changes across all five days. It confirmed what we had suspected — the race gets progressively harder each day, with the final leg being the most demanding of all. Knowing that going in is exactly the kind of strategic information that can make the difference between finishing strong and running out of energy at the wrong moment.

Back at Tech, while the McKee crew was at the shop, the other half of the team was working on shirt designs and soldering up the solar cell strips. They knocked out eight of the twenty-six strips today. Steady progress.

We also made an adjustment to the rear shock absorbers, cranking them up to their maximum spring rate to try to level the ride height. The car currently sits a little nose-high. The shock adjustment helped but did not get us all the way there, so the likely next step is moving the upper shock mount tube rearward to bring things into better balance.

One more thing worth noting. We had a serious conversation today about punctuality and commitment. Several members of the McKee crew arrived more than an hour late. That is not acceptable this close to race day, and more broadly it is not acceptable as a member of any team. Everyone has to be somewhere when they say they will be. We had a good talk about what that means, both for the car and for life after this project. I think it landed.

On a much better note — congratulations to our graduating seniors from both schools. McKee held graduation last Thursday night and we could not be more proud of those students heading out into the world. Tech’s graduation is tomorrow, which means we are not expecting much from that side of the team, and that is completely okay. For the students not walking, they will keep the cell soldering going.

We also got some great news on the logistics front. Ms. Finan will be joining the team as an additional chaperone. She will travel with the students on the flight down and hopefully back as well. With Everton and myself driving the trailer to Texas, having Ms. Finan and Nafi there to get the kids checked in and onto a 5:51 AM flight is genuinely a relief.

On the funding side, we are still waiting on National Grid to come through on their promised grant. We are hopeful they will follow through as race day draws closer. On a brighter note, Con Ed came through today with an email letting us know that their grant deposit is on the way shortly. That is great news and we are grateful for their support. Every dollar helps when you are building a solar car on a student budget.

Tomorrow’s agenda for McKee is to glue in the foam and carbon fiber ribs to stiffen the polycarbonate, finalize the tilt and pivot system, weld up as much of the frame as possible, and add the lower halves of the chromoly rollbar. The Tech team will keep pushing on cell soldering where they can.

A lot left to do. A lot done today. More tomorrow.