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COVID 19 Compliant - Morning Intermediate Desert Drive - Red Sand Bonanza: "Pink Rock to Badayer" - Sharjah - 17 Oct 2020


Ale Vallecchi

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Dear Ale,
Surprised to receive the above, despite making the payment. I selected this since it suit me, time and location. I've been off road many times, after taking off road coarse with Emirates driving institute in Dubai. If still not acceptable, please cancel my subscription and return the payment.
Hisham

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Dear Desertnauts.

Let's get ready for the Red Sand Bonanza PLUS the Drone Challenge (by Lorenzo).

As already mentioned, with the goal to shoot professional drone footage over Pink Rock at dawn, we'll anticipate the meeting time at 2 December Cafereria at 5:30AM SHARP. We'll deflate quickly and climb PR to wait for the sun to rise.

Then we'll head toward Big Red (ant "The Big Dune Before Big Red") through the dunes' plateau, and after crossing the tarmac road, we'll head into Badayer proper, looking for a couple of suitable bowls to ride, while the drone will work its magic.

The convoy order will be the following:

@Rinelle Sanaani Second Lead

@Yousef Alimadadi at #3

@Mehmet Volga will be #4

@Jun Zamora at #5 and

@Lorenzo Candelpergher will sweep.

Once we reach the meeting point, please tune into Carnity Channel #2 (446.031).

Looking forward to see you tomorrow before dawn. Prepare yourselves and your cars to look good for the cameras :-D

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THE DAY OF THE DRONE: Pink Rock to Badayer "Red Sand Bonanza - Drive Report

It doesn't happen everyday to have the opportunity of driving with a professional drone pilot, with his drone in tow. As soon as @Lorenzo Candelpergher suggested that we shoot some aerial footage during the drive, we jumped for joy, and immediately organized an extended itinerary, to include both scenic sites (Pink Rock at dawn is certainly a sight to behold), and more action-packed locations (Badayer's dune pyramids and bowls).

After deflating in the morning's chill (17 degrees....brrrrr), we moved, while still in the dark, toward Pink Rock. Once at its base, Lorenzo's drone took off in the first light of day, to shoot the climb through the rock's fork, then hovered to record the sun rising over the desert and the mountains behind. Can't wait to see the footage. With the first scene completed, we proceeded to cross the plateau that separates Pink Rock from Badayer. Unfortunately, the crossing was made unpleasant by the enormous number of tracks, covering virtually every dune, hill, bump, step, pocket, and anything else on the ground. A clear reminder that off-roading season has started, it makes one long for the past months, when driving in these same areas used to be as smooth as silk. Getting closer to Big Red (and the "Tall Dune Before Big Red") it became clear that track-wise things were not getting better. On the contrary, the closer we got to the big dunes, the more we realized how much damage to the terrain the Friday climbing frenzy can make. Nonetheless, we managed a few bumpy ins and outs of a couple of Big red's bowls, before we decided to move into Badayer proper, pointing toward the farthest bowls, in the hope that less cars had reached them the day before. Luckily, that was the case, so that the convoy managed to ride up and down a couple of tall dune pyramids, with a synchronism that went from rusty, at first, to smooth and coordinated toward the end. At this point (we were actually at the furthest point from Badayer Shops) Lorenzo's drone made its second and final appearance, to shoot what I hope will be very nice footage of myself, @Rinelle Sanaani, @Yousef Alimadadi, @Mehmet Volga and @Jun Zamora riding ridges, scaling bowls, criss-crossin over to the successive one, then up, down and across again, in a series of four adjacent bowls. Until the batteries ran out, and we had to all get back from being actors in an action scene, to just being the desert wanderers that we usually are. In fact, we had wandered so much that we found ourselves almost at the foot of Iftar Bowl, and following a couple of stucks on increasingly soft (and once again, very marked) sand, we decided it was time to write "The End" to this drive.

In the end, we had driven for 4:20 hours and 60.5 Km, at an average speed of 14 Km/h (22 Km/h while moving) and almost 1 Km of vertical climbing.

Thank everybody for enduring the long and challenging drive. Have a great week, and look forward to seeing you soon.

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Dear @Ale Vallecchi,

This drive was really an ejoyable one. The whole convoy drove fantastically well and we indeed had good chances to play with the drone. 

I had never seen Pink Rock, Big Red, Badayer and Area 53 with so many tracks.. Really too many, but the landscape remains worth the effort of driving on such an uneven ground. Personally I didn't mind and as I'm still learning I think heavily tracked terrain with churned up sand is not a bad training after all. 

The sunrise at Pink Rock was a spectacular moment. Unfortunately my drone had some issues due to a firmware update and kept on losing GPS signal in the first minutes (a know problem, but always a hassle). On the 1st attempt while your were climbing to the top, I even had to perform an emergency landing as the drone wouldn't gain altitude properly. On the 2nd flight I got rid of the GPS and flew the drone manually, which does the job well even if not with the same stability. I was able to shoot the whole convoy (@Ale Vallecchi@Rinelle Sanaani@Yousef Alimadadi, @Mehmet Volga and @Jun Zamora) climbing to the Rock and descending it on the east side with the very first dawn light and then to shoot some nice footage of the first sunrays.. and I literally mean "rays", you'll see.. here's a GIF taste:

DJI_0004_2.gif.f5efc407c54541e83827539721a11cc7.gif

The 2nd shooting was more focused on the driving itself and it was fun to repeatedly shoot the whole convoy performing a few rounds of ridge riding, criss crossing, slide sloping up and down across multiple bowls. Again I was able to capture a few nice shots, even if in general I wish I did a few more fly-by maeuvers, ie flying very close to the cars (next time..).

Honestly I haven't had the time to edit the footage and extract a couple of minutes of highlights, I'll do it in the next days. Here's just an adrenalinic GIF glimpse:

DJI_0006_1.gif.990fd8545cbb15cd570d9528894af1eb.gif

What I realized is that I need more planning and less improvising. What is key, for future shots, is to repeat again and again the same actions a few times so I can shoot from multiple angles and in different ways. Our 2nd shooting was OK from this point of view, but the loop was quite long, so I had limited chances to repeat the shots (I actually had a 3rd battery but I didn't want ro exaggerate..). 

Great fun and great learning. Edited video available in the next days.

Edited by Lorenzo Candelpergher
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34 minutes ago, Lorenzo Candelpergher said:

Dear @Ale Vallecchi,

This drive was really an ejoyable one. The whole convoy drove fantastically well and we indeed had good chances to play with the drone. 

I had never seen Pink Rock, Big Red, Badayer and Area 53 with so many tracks.. Really too many, but the landscape remains worth the effort of driving on such an uneven ground. Personally I didn't mind and as I'm still learning I think heavily tracked terrain with churned up sand is not a bad training after all. 

The sunrise at Pink Rock was a spectacular moment. Unfortunately my drone had some issues due to a firmware update and kept on losing GPS signal in the first minutes (a know problem, but always a hassle). On the 1st attempt while your were climbing to the top, I even had to perform an emergency landing as the drone wouldn't gain altitude properly. On the 2nd flight I got rid of the GPS and flew the drone manually, which does the job well even if not with the same stability. I was able to shoot the whole convoy (@Ale Vallecchi@Rinelle Sanaani@Yousef Alimadadi, @Mehmet Volga and @Jun Zamora) climbing to the Rock and descending it on the east side with the very first dawn light and then to shoot some nice footage of the first sunrays.. and I literally mean "rays", you'll see.. here's a GIF taste:

DJI_0004_2.gif.f5efc407c54541e83827539721a11cc7.gif

The 2nd shooting was more focused on the driving itself and it was fun to repeatedly shoot the whole convoy performing a few rounds of ridge riding, criss crossing, slide sloping up and down across multiple bowls. Again I was able to capture a few nice shots, even if in general I wish I did a few more fly-by maeuvers, ie flying very close to the cars (next time..).

Honestly I haven't had the time to edit the footage and extract a couple of minutes of highlights, I'll do it in the next days. Here's just an adrenalinic GIF glimpse:

DJI_0006_1.gif.990fd8545cbb15cd570d9528894af1eb.gif

What I realized is that I need more planning and less improvising. What is key, for future shots, is to repeat again and again the same actions a few times so I can shoot from multiple angles and in different ways. Our 2nd shooting was OK from this point of view, but the loop was quite long, so I had limited chances to repeat the shots (I actually had a 3rd battery but I didn't want ro exaggerate..). 

Great fun and great learning. Edited video available in the next days.

Thanks @Lorenzo Candelpergher. It was great fun being part of the drone shooting, and can't wait to see the final result. For me and the rest of the convoy the footage will be stunning, no matter what. Of course, I do look forward to more opportunities to perfect your work, so feel free to ask, any time you wish to fly the drone.

I also appreciate your point of view on the over-driven segments we visited on Saturday. Heavily marked sand certainly tests your driving, in terms of use of power and control of the car. Better to get used to it, and know how to handle these conditions. Nonetheless, I will continue to look for less visited, and yet challenging areas, to bring a smoother and more unspoiled flavor to our drives.

Thanks a lot for your enthusiasm and passion.

 

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