The action was really on today at the Hidden Valley racetrack as another five international teams arrived: Two teams from Taiwan of the three entered, the mighty University of Michigan fresh from their win in the North American Solar Challenge, AGU Agilia from Japan, and finally the new team from Calgary, Alberta.

MIT still had plenty of repair work to do and were wondering where their battery was, being shipped from New York.

Aurora’s activities included tracing a short in the solar panel which gave Jack an electric shock when he was washing the tail end. We cleaned up our main trailer after its journey from Melbourne. And finally we were able to give Kon a test drive early in the afternoon.

The Aurora 101 car was the subject of great interest for these newly arriving teams, fascinated by our polystyrene and balsa wood solar panel structure and the unique three wheel fixed chassis. Most teams face the same design issues as all the others, but the neatness of Aurora’s layout drew many comments.

Jack checked on the whereabouts of the Southern Aurora team which was driving from Hamilton to Darwin. They had reached Mataranka Springs and will arrive in Darwin tomorrow. We also expect UNSW with their new two seat car to arrive tomorrow.
Lunch. Beautiful make your own sandwiches with fruit went down very well.

Daniel Mills arrived mid-afternoon from Adelaide where his HPV were the top high school group in the big race over the weekend. We also expect David Sims-Williams around midnight.

By mid afternoon the team leader and assistant from Nuna visited the pit area to see how the other teams were shaping up. They reported that all the repairs from their accident last Friday had been successful and will have their car at the track by Wednesday afternoon.

We made arrangements to visit Kerry Mazda in Darwin for a function on Wednesday evening. We have organized to go through scrutineering on Friday to enable Tom Baker a last minute adjustment of the solar power electronics. So for Aurora this was another early finish heading towards a good dinner in town.