I have been involved in electrathon for a long time at the high school level. The idea of building a super light chassis and then adding ballast to the driver's weight is not in the best interest of the sport. Why not add the weight to the structure of the vehicle. Weigh the car with the driver in it and have an minimum agreed weight. That would make a safer vehicle.  With the speeds that car are traveling a roll cage should be required.  When my high school went to the Solar/Electric 500 in Arizona in 93 the electrathon record was 24 mph. Now that is doubled.

The reason the weight was 180 is that is Clark Beasley's weight.  At least think about lowering the high school weight.  We were at the Emerald Coast Electrathon with two car and both had to add 90lb. of ballast.  Lets improve the sport. I am in this for the STEM benefit for students and safety needs to be #1  P=( W*Crr + 1/2 p *V2* CdA)V

Bob Franz

Southwest High School

San Antonio Texas

Bob,

I think that the challenge of building the lightest possible safe vehicle is an important part of Electrathon. I also feel that the rules are adequate to keep things safe at the speeds we are racing at. The smaller lighter driver will always have an advantage but the 180 lb rule keeps size from being an insurmountable handicap and opens the sport to more people.

That being said, you make a good point about things being different for the High School teams. The average high school student is lighter than the average adult. Which means most HS teams are carrying a lot of lead. Making the HS driver official weight something lower (140?, 120?) might be a good idea.

This would make HS more competitive for overall honors and give Open and College teams a way to explain why, despite all our wisdom and experience, we were beaten by a bunch of youngsters. Needed this excuse last weekend.

I had students race at Hawkeye Downs(1/2 mile oval) in Cedar Rapids,IA for many years.  Plenty of wins and excellent placings with High school drivers weighing 200 lbs +.  A standard class HS Division Victory at Kansas Motor Speedway in 08 with a driver 220+ in shorts and T-shirt.  Former driver and student placed third behind CML and one of Dave's cars, scaled 200lbs.  The longer the track, the less importance on weight and more on aero.  Short tracks are more dependent on drive knowlege and ablity than weight.  This may be different than what you thought to be true but from experence it is right on target.

This is what makes electrathon racing a challenge and pushes teams to think outside the box while staying within the rules.  What can you do to make a car light, strong, reliable, safe, and quick car all in one. It's like with everything, the lighter the better it will perform.  The main reason the weight rule was put in place was because schools would find the smallest possible driver who weight nothing and they would be doing laps on everyone else. With the driver weight in place, it opens up more people to drive thus getting more people involved with the sport which is the other thing to. The more people involved, the better the sport will be.

Zaine

I am well aware of the power calc for constant velocity. My concern is, with higher speeds, it would be better to do what most racing (SCCA) does, weight the car and driver.

P = (W *Crr + 1/2 p V2 *CdA)V with velocity cubed it is obvious that the areo term is most important.  the car in the picture went 42 mph at Irwindale in 2002 and that is without heating the batteries. It first ran at the Pentad Nationals 1999. The speed is listed as 37.5 it had good aero numbers.  

http://www.lasv.org/pastprojects/vehicles/highvoltage.htm        

Bob Franz

We were doing the Zero Emmisions Challenge with sponsorship from the AQMD and Edision. We had one teacher who was more interested in setting records than safety and that was the end of the ZEV challenge.  Los Altos went on to build several solar cars, a human powered airplane. Los Altos competed in Chrysler's Build Your Dream Vehicle,  the Winston Solar challenge, the World Solar challenge in Australia, and the American Solar Challenge as well as the first Shell Eco Marathon with a hydrogen fuel cell car. www.lasv.org  show some of the projects that Los Altos did while I was one of the advisors.  We loved Electrathon but it seemed that all the powers that ran E/A moved from So. Cal. 

I would like to mention two of the good guys who helped high school electrathon teams. Clark Beasley was/is a great guy. He made no money from his work. He came to our school several times to teach us how to get started. He left his mold at Cerritos College so that anyone who wanted a body could build one.

Mark Murphy was another good guy. We purchased one of his early bodies and he truly wanted to see the sport grow for the right reasons. 

I am happy to be back into Electrathon. It is a great way to get students interested in STEM. It has helped some of our team members to get scholarship and internships here in San Antonio. We are most interested in aerodynamics and caculating the performance then seeing if we are accurate.

We hope to interest other high schools here and hold our own event.  With the help of Toyota Texas we have been able to use the San Antonio Speedway. I have been contacted by DOE that they want to hold an electrathon event in So. Cal in September at the old LTA Marine base.  Dan Eberle from the American Solar Challenge had contacted me about this. I hope it goes, it is a way to bring back Electrathon to So. Cal. There are several school who have cars sitting on shelves. Solar boat is the hot high school competition in So. Cal it is electrathon on the water.

Thanks to those who have kepted Electrathon alive, I think with the focus on STEM it can grow with proper guidance and safety.

Bob Franz

STEM Consultant Southwest ISD.