They did it again.
Fort High’s super mileage vehicle, fresh from the Super Mileage Challenge in Brainerd, Mn. last week, took third place in the modified class for the second year running.
This marked the fifth year senior students in the Transportation Technology class at Fort High have taken on the challenge of building a vehicle for the competition, and they remain the only Canadian school participating.
After six runs at the Brainerd track, their vehicle averaged an impressive 487 miles per gallon–with their best topping 534 mi/gal.
Despite being proud of their final standing, the Fort High team admitted a bit more prep time could have upped the mileage and their showing in the competition, which attracted 84 entries this year.
With no place to test the vehicle here before heading down to Brainerd, any potential “bugs” had to be worked out on the track.
“We had our sights set high going down there and it was a learning experience,” teacher Gord Witherspoon said last week. “If we’d have been properly prepared, we’d have done a lot better–we weren’t that far from second [place].”
Next year Witherspoon hopes to be granted use of the airport runway here to do test runs of the vehicle.
“Second [place] beat us by only a 100 mi/gal.,” noted Mark Bujold, 17.
First place went to a team from a private school in Minneapolis, which has garnered that position for some years now.
“We still can’t figure out how [first place] got 1,261 mi/gal.,” said Bujold.
“There were some well-advanced cars there and some made out of peach baskets or something,” chuckled another student.
Matt Williams, 17, who helped build and drive the car, plans a post-secondary career in engineering. He said the experience of building the super mileage vehicle taught him some lessons for future reference.
“Preparation is very key and thinking it through–[the experience] taught me that,” he remarked. “It also taught me how to prepare on the spot, too.”
Meanwhile, the quest to build a better super mileage vehicle for next year already is on, Witherspoon noted.
While the Super Mileage Challenge and some new design concepts are still fresh in their minds, students will be putting their thoughts to paper for next year’s crew to work on.
“Those ideas will be gone if we wait,” stressed Witherspoon. “Next year will be a totally new design again–we’ll scam what we can for parts off of this one and start over.”
And just what are those ideas swirling around? “It’s top secret,” smiled Bujold.
“We have to make it as basic [a car] as possible,” said Williams.
“No–advanced as possible,” interjected Bujold.