It has been about a week since I headed back to Austin to work with the solar car team.  Ahead of me is the biggest gamble I am taking.  With me are some of my best friends, who are also working on the car with me, and some of my worst foes, who are preventing the team from entering the race over some legal mumbo-jumbo.  There is still a great amount of work to do, but work is being done a lot faster with no school.

On the electrical side, we now have full battery protection and fan control on the National Instruments CompactRIO!  Although we spent about two days debugging the program when things were abnormal, we managed to get through it.  Here’s a picture of the CompactRIO hooked up to the batteries:

Amidst the mad end-of-semester, final examination rush, we started the process of creating the carbon fiber body.  Saturday was our moment of truth as we pulled the body out of the mold.  Although it took 8 people to get the body out, it takes only one person to lift the entire body: