Dear Friends of the Okemos Solar Racing Club,
Thank you for your interest in the Okemos Solar Racing Team. We wanted to give a quick update on what we have been working on. So far this year we have been working on developing our club. We have a record number of people at 60 members! In addition, we have restructured many aspects of our club into divisions in order to make it more manageable. We are proud to announce our division leaders for this year:
Captain - Eric Andrechek
Mechanical - Marie Kroneman
Electrical - Grant James
Business - Sophia Lee
Marketing - Lauren Peck
Telemetry - Eric Andrechek
CAD - Sterling Mims
Planning of 2021 Car - Gal Yossef
Drivers - Marie Kroneman
With these new club changes, we have been very busy this year! We were excited to drive the car in our high school’s homecoming parade. This generated a lot of community interest and we answered many questions about our unique car.
We then stripped the car down to its frame:
We have also been focusing heavily on aerodynamics, so with the advice of some engineers from AVL as well as our teacher Mr. Pline here at OHS, we have begun making massive aerodynamic changes. Our mirrors have all been removed in order to install a new aerodynamic digital design. One of our mechanical members, Rayan Mughal, has also been working on prototyping a design to cover the sides of our car’s wheels in order to prevent further drag there.
In addition, we have discovered our windshield is very aerodynamically inefficient. In order to come up with a new windshield design, we had our mechanical division split into multiple teams. Each team came up with their own windshield design and then using the testing mount shown below we were able to measure definitively which one of our windshield designs was most aerodynamic.
As many of you know, last year we came in second place in our division. This summer we have made it our goal to bring home first place. In order to do that there are two main things we are focusing on: improving aerodynamics and making the car lighter. To reach our goal there are a lot of parts we need to order, such as new solar panels, new batteries, aluminum for a new panel support structure, and many smaller parts.
On that note, we are proud to announce our winter fundraiser! We have a used can and bottle drive planned for December 15th and a bake sale planned with the school for February. We have a goal of raising $10,000 this winter. To do that we need your help! On our newly designed website, we have a donation page, or you can visit the donation campaign directly here. If you are a sponsor, we would love to continue your sponsorship with us! Please feel free to email us to discuss our new sponsorship tiers.
Thank you to everyone for your continued support, we really appreciate our encouraging community!
Sincerely,
Eric Andrechek
Captain and Head of Telemetry
Okemos High School Solar Racing Club
2800 Jolly Rd, Okemos, MI, 48864