PHOTON - SOLAR SPLASH 2001

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Photon 1

 

 

DAY 1.

Solar Splash 2001 was held on June 20-24th at Hoyt Lake, Dellaware Park, Buffalo NY.

Our team came in early just before the beginning of the official inscriptions.  After where the inspections. Electrical inspection : Nothing to report... Only green flags!  Mechanical inspection : Some rules we did not understand well and we have to comply.
First day was done before Photon had touched water.  On the other hand, the Mixer - organised for inter-team mixes helped us knowing judges and other teams.

 

DAY 2.
Retaking mechanical inspection (2 orange flags) we gained the right to put Photon on water.  Trouble : there is no boat ramp on site as we taught, like the ones on about every boat lakes... Therefore, we had to borrow some poles to raise Photon and lower it in the lake.  Thanks to the team from the College of New Jersey.   Under the eyes of several other teams wanting to know more about the boat from ÉTS, Photon touches water for the first time, under the cheers of every team members.

There are 2 qualifications events - maneuverability (for the endurance) and sprint.  One can also choose to try the solar slalom at the same time, which is a totally different event.  The Slalom uses the sprint configuration, but maneuverability is done under the "solar" configuration, used by the endurance.  Our choice : Slalom, since our skipper, Dominique Cauchon, was trying the vehicle for the first time and we wanted to make some adjustments... until the direction fails... one piece of the direction unglued inside the handles.  Repairs, acquisition of new stuff, these where the end of that day for Photon. 

DAY 3.
Qualifications are until 11h45.  No event was passed by Photon.  We go for the sprint, done after a false start.  Then, second try at the slalom.  This time, another piece broke, again in the control handles.  15 minutes available for qualifications...  Photon and its team works on water to fix the broken direction... temporary method: VISE-GRIP as handles.  Photon was on pad at 11h44 for its final qualification in maneuverability, which has been done on low speed. The afternoon, instead of doing our competitive Sprint, Photon changed its directional control.

 

DAY 4.
It's raining... the endurance race is postponed and instead are the Sprint finals.  The endurance will be held on the final day.  Photon gets ready for its Sprint and goes on water for it, but an electrical system failure causes a false start... no points for the sprints, only "DNS" (Did Not Start).  The team works all evening on the electrical systems. 

 

DAY 5. final
Everything is ready for the endurance, the event where Photon wants to gets a maximum score.  According to the schedule, two endurances heat are held.  Laps are noted, counted at quarters and the two heat counted together as total.  Photon starts the race, but some disconnections in power systems occurs, lowering the vehicle's efficiency.

Second endurance heat... A battery being killed by the first run, Photon finds spare ones from our friends from the team from Kensas State University.  Having them registered as second endurance battery set, we can go with second heat.  Ok, those are not the same type... adaptation must be made to the connectors... without proper equipment, we used again VISE-GRIP!  At the start signal, a failure happened and the Photon team fix the trouble, again on water and get the crowd's acclamations. Photon finish the endurances with a total of 19 laps even with the failures. 

Overall :

At the end of that fifth day was held the award ceremony.  Photon went overall 14th on 20 inscriptions. The group's efforts where rewarded by the Outstanding electric system design award presented by IEEE.  Then, t-shirts exchanges!  Most wanted by Photon members: of course, Kensas State and New Jersey.  On other hands, several americans where seeking the canadian t-shirts...  We want to thanks again all our sponsors that help us to live this beautiful experience.

SOLAR SPLASH ®

The World Championship of Solar Boating
June 16-20, 2004
Buffalo, NY

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