Volume 48, No. 10, June 15, 2006
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POCKET
ROCKET: OFFCDT Rowan Carter is firing already for December’s
Formula-1 style race.
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Photo
by LACW Sonja Inderwisch
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ENGINES
were running hot at Williamtown recently when a special car rolled
into town.
OFFCDT Rowan Carter and other students from ADFA’s School
of Aerospace, Civil and Mechanical Engineering (ACME) racing team
took the car, painted in the livery of the 20th Anniversary 2OCU
Hornet, to the base in the lead-up to a competition in December.
ACME Racing was established at ADFA in 2004 to compete in the
Formula SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) competition.
The competition requires uni students to design, construct, test
and race a small, cheap, high-performance, Formula 1-styled racing
car.
ACME’s car is powered by a Suzuki GSX-R 600cc motorcycle
engine.
Last year 25 university teams participated in the racing event,
drawing participants from Australia, Japan, New Zealand and India.
ACME Racing took tenth position overall in the competition, and
a trophy for third place in the acceleration event.
In the skidpan event, the car was required to complete two laps
of the right loop and then two laps of the left loop of a figure-eight
track before exiting through a designated break in the track.
Smart driving put the team in eighth position.
The next trial was the autocross, a two-lap track event over a
700-800m track with obstacles such as chicanes and slaloms made
from traffic cones. The team finished the track event in sixteenth
position.
The final event, the enduro, was a 22km trial using two drivers
and included a fuel economy event, the team finishing sixth in
the enduro and fifth in the fuel economy.
With two years of driving and engineering experience behind them,
the ACME team is confident of better success in December.
