A couple of weeks back, some students from Frankston Primary School tried out their human powered vehicles around the OGKRC track. Morry Rubinstein, Principal of Frankston Primary School outlines their upcoming grueling event.
Website: http://www.racvenergybreakthrough.net/
The event is held in Maryborough in central Vic and there are lots of categories – Primary HPV 14 hour race, Secondary HPV 24 hour, Hybrids (with motors) 24hours, Pushcarts for Primary schools. We do the Primary HPV races.
Basically the kids race for 14 hours on a street circuit that is about 1.1kms, this is worth 50 points to the team that comes first and the rest of the teams get a scaled percentage according to the number of laps completed in the 14 hours.
The second part of the event is their presentation, speeches, project work and a song and dance for the judges. This is worth 25 points.
The third part is design and construction where the kids talk to a panel all about the design build and mechanics of the vehicle 25 points.
Last year we won the event by winning the latter 2 and coming 14th in the race. With our new trike this year we are hoping to get much higher up than 14th. (if all goes well) It is a much quicker trike.
Below is part of this week’s newsletter. This explains a bit about the RACV EB.
RACV Energy Breakthrough
Our year 6 students have been busy over the past few months as they prepare for the RACV Energy breakthrough in November. They have been training hard so that they will be able to ride our Human Powered Vehicle ‘The Overtaker’ in the 14 hour race. Apart from this they have been extremely proactive with their fundraising and have raised an amazing amount of money to support them at the event. The team have also been working on their presentation, where they have to stand up in front of the judges and present their speeches and team song.
After coming first in the event last year, we are all really excited about our prospects this year.
We have also been extremely lucky to have worked with Adrian from Holden this year. Adrian volunteered to be part of the Holden Mentor Program and was assigned to us.
Last week we were lucky enough to visit the Oakleigh Go Kart Racing Club and have a practice on their track. Because the track is much tighter than our training track at Casey Fields, this enabled us to learn the ‘finer arts’ of taking corners properly before the big race. Thanks to Adam at the OGKRC and Adrian for organising this.
Adrian also organised a day for us at the Monash University Wind Tunnel. We were able to take our HPV into the tunnel and test it for aerodynamics. This was a fantastic opportunity for our team to visit the wind tunnel and learn about the many aspects of aerodynamics. Our entire team really got a lot out of this visit, and we were extremely grateful to the staff at Monash University for giving up their time to show us around and explain the facility.
Our team are going really well and are preparing well form the big event. In the coming weeks they will be unveiling the ‘New’ Overtaker. We wish them all the best.