A few thoughts after a few drinks

As the evening draws to a close and the vehicle relaxes in the hanger, batteries charging we turn to a bit of liquid refreshment and reflect on what was a tough day.

Our main downfall was a lack of raw resource, wind energy.  The vehicles that made it over the line were using extremely low gear ratios and even then were stop-start for large periods of the race as the power drawn from the blades stalled them.  We can get these low ratios with our systems but it might be that the throttle is set up such that even small throttle demands result in too high a ratio.

We are going to try the following things tomorrow:

1. Update our vehicle throttle management controller to offer to sets of sensitivities.    This will effectively give Susan (our driver) a second or low gear.
2. Reduce the pitch angle of our blades.  This will result in a lower power at higher wind speeds but given that the prediction is for low winds this may be a worthwhile strategy.

 These changes will maybe reduce our chances of winning but would increase the likelihood that we be the first all-electric drive-train based vehicle to run on the track despite previous attempts by other teams.

Now to sleep.....