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COVID19 Compliant - Morning Fewbie Plus Desert Drive - Faqa - 5 Mar 2021


Wrangeld

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Thanks for the drive @Wrangeld - you promised lots of ridge-riding and criss-crossing - and you delivered! We had a few early stucks and many refusals, and we had to do a LOT of digging!  But this is all part of the fun, as long as the F+ members use the opportunity to learn and enhance their driving skills. Once the convoy got their groove, it was really nice to cross this part of the desert. 

I did see a LOT of "fighting gravity", which the drivers should try and eliminate - rather steer down and try again. Thanks to @Jeandre Bezuidenhout for attending to the 2 pop-outs, as well as recovering of drivers not following the tracks - and especially for picking up the garbage that a fellow convoy member just discarded in the desert :-(

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5 hours ago, Kalahari said:

h the drivers should try and eliminate - rather

@Kalahari thanks for your feedback and will keep that in mind any other suggestions are welcomed (since you were driving behind us you had a better view of where i can improve).

@Jeandre Bezuidenhout, thanks for keeping our surroundings clean, I don't think i have discarded anything in the desert and if it was me or from my car it would be purely unintentional or purely due to wind and i do apologies if it was from my car. 

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5 hours ago, Kalahari said:

Thanks for the drive @Wrangeld - you promised lots of ridge-riding and criss-crossing - and you delivered! We had a few early stucks and many refusals, and we had to do a LOT of digging!  But this is all part of the fun, as long as the F+ members use the opportunity to learn and enhance their driving skills. Once the convoy got their groove, it was really nice to cross this part of the desert. 

I did see a LOT of "fighting gravity", which the drivers should try and eliminate - rather steer down and try again. Thanks to @Jeandre Bezuidenhout for attending to the 2 pop-outs, as well as recovering of drivers not following the tracks - and especially for picking up the garbage that a fellow convoy member just discarded in the desert :-(

Recovery of drivers not following tracks should be me when I went to check out on @Shehab Alawadhi's bridge situation and got perched up on a bush neither able to help him nor able to help myself. I couldn't help checking him out as I haven't seen a bridge situation in my life. As @Wrangeld advised me later that I should have left the car behind @Danish Mohammad and tried to walk up the steep dune to watch the spectacle sorry I couldn't do it. I can't stand for long time because of a varicose vein situation in my legs. Moreover I found out after @Tbone's drive that desert driving lowers hypertension and checked to find out that my diastolic pressure lingers at only 60 now whereas it was around the 90 to 95 mark as I'm a smoker and obese. I suppose these are real low levels and would like the doctors like @Mohamed Seidam or @Chaitanya D to comment about this phenomenon. 

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3 minutes ago, Thomas Varghese said:

Recovery of drivers not following tracks should be me when I went to check out on @Shehab Alawadhi's bridge situation and got perched up on a bush neither able to help him nor able to help myself. I couldn't help checking him out as I haven't seen a bridge situation in my life. As @Wrangeld advised me later that I should have left the car behind @Danish Mohammad and tried to walk up the steep dune to watch the spectacle sorry I couldn't do it. I can't stand for long time because of a varicose vein situation in my legs. Moreover I found out after @Tbone's drive that desert driving lowers hypertension and checked to find out that my diastolic pressure lingers at only 60 now whereas it was around the 90 to 95 mark as I'm a smoker and obese. I suppose these are real low levels and would like the doctors like @Mohamed Seidam or @Chaitanya D to comment about this phenomenon. 

Interesting, is that so?  Here I was thinking of not joining a drive one day before my Covid19 vaccine is due as I was afraid it may shoot my blood pressure up 🤷‍♀️

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1 minute ago, kolinrrj said:

Interesting, is that so?  Here I was thinking of not joining a drive one day before my Covid19 vaccine is due as I was afraid it may shoot my blood pressure up 🤷‍♀️

let the doctors come up with expert opinions @kolinrrj. @Tbone commented during his drive that if he doesn't do off roading his BP shoots up. The moment I reached home I checked and my BP levels were very down. I checked for 2 days now and its the same level. 

Edited by Thomas Varghese
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50 minutes ago, N@ved said:

@Kalahari thanks for your feedback and will keep that in mind any other suggestions are welcomed (since you were driving behind us you had a better view of where i can improve).

@Jeandre Bezuidenhout, thanks for keeping our surroundings clean, I don't think i have discarded anything in the desert and if it was me or from my car it would be purely unintentional or purely due to wind and i do apologies if it was from my car. 

Hi @N@ved, no, it was not you that threw things away.  I could not find too much fault with the back-end of the convoy that I could observe.  Some initial mistakes where drivers did not keep sufficient space in technical areas (and then knock-on impact from a stuck), but those were quickly rectified as you would expect from a F+ group.  Also some stucks / refusals where drivers tried to steer too sharply in soft sand or reversed into pockets without assessing the risk.  Don't feel too done-in from a crest or 2 - that is part of this sport, especially when you suddenly see the convoy looping back when you are about to cross.

The biggest risk was from the long side-slopes, where in the end the ridge was to be crossed:  The reality is that for a long side-slope, cars at the back of a convoy will be met with lots of churned-up sand and sliding down with gravity.  The temptation is always to give more gas and try and steer higher, while the tail is dragging down.  The risk is exacerbated when you then try and cross the ridge - something that I will never forget once @Srikumar "scolded" me way back when I was trying that stupid trick :-) It is unbelievable how vulnerable the physics are to create a flip of a car - at F+ drivers should have the confidence to go down, do a loop and generate momentum again to go up the ridge to cross - in a nice and controlled manner.

The key is to use every second in the sand as a learning experience - even doing recoveries (e.g. what would I have done differently to not get stuck; or what do I think is the best way to do that recovery).  Fewbie is about 50/50 between enjoyment and learning in my view.

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35 minutes ago, Kalahari said:

The risk is exacerbated when you then try and cross the ridge - something that I will never forget once @Srikumar "scolded" me way back when I was trying that stupid trick :-)

I somehow don't recollect the incident and if I was harsh I do apologize. But you have raised a very important point which is of fishtailing on a long side slope. Fishtailing if not controlled can go wrong very fast especially considering the speed at which this maneuver is done.

Also, something that is to be mentioned to all members is that when you are driving in a convoy be mindful that there are cars behind you. So in your excitement donot churn up the track by taking the wrong line and then giving too much gas, this ruins the fun for the cars behind. Try to leave as less a foot print as possible on the sand. 

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11 minutes ago, Srikumar said:

I somehow don't recollect the incident and if I was harsh I do apologize.

No need to apologize @Srikumar - I prefer that people tell me when I did something stupid, before I suffer the consequences of my stupidity. 

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I am coming rather late in the day to the post drive report - life has a way of getting in the way of things. 

This was a drive of a few parts. As ever, the technical. This seemed to cause more problems than I expected. At Febie Plus level, the expectation is that drivers are capable of getting themselves through some 'light technical' dunes. This band of dunes at the start of a Faqa drive are optional. We can drive around them, or drive through them. Our newbie drives drive round this band of dunes. A Fewbie Plus should be able to navigate through the dunes within 20 minutes. We took an hour!

After that the route to Solar Park is all about wider higher dunes, ridges and slide slopes. 

I hoped we might get further than Solar Park but we did have quite a lot of refusals and stucks along the way. 

What to do? Fewbie Plus is a bit like the challenging teenage years. Drivers are in between getting the basics right and becoming accomplished at self recovery and adrenalin filled drives. It requires concentration, it requires focus and it requires putting what you learned until that point into practice. It also requires the patience from the leaders and the support that things will go wrong and you need to factor into the timing that that will happen. 

As one of the drivers mentioned - we covered 8km in the first 1.5 hours and 35km in the last hour! Once you get into the swing of the drive it gets easier - but at Fewbie Plus you should be prepared for action from the first minute. 

Looking forward to seeing you all again soon. Thanks to @Jeandre Bezuidenhout and @Kalahari - you guys were amazing and amazingly patient. 

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