Afternoon Fewbie Desert Drive - Waiting for Iftar: Faqa Loop - Dubai - 9 Apr 2022

[Mahmoud Taha]

11 minutes ago, Krishna R said:

Thank you @Ale Vallecchi for the invite, however I am forced to opt out due to a hectic work schedule tomorrow. My apologies!

Same here, sorry can't join it's a working day.

[Ale Vallecchi]

10 hours ago, Dimitrios Kalogirou said:

Thanks @Ale Vallecchi but can't do tomorrow. When you say "if not Saturday", can we opt in for Saturday?

Hello @Dimitrios Kalogirou. That will depend on how the waiting list will move. At the moment it's still quite long, and the system will let waitlisted members into the drive, as signed up members will cancel (if they do), according to the order of the WL. Let's see. Thanks anyways. 

[Sunil Mathew]

I will join @Ale Vallecchi, ...keen to know how a recce drive goes..

hope the meeting point and time are same as the original drive ??

 

[Hugo]

@Ale Vallecchithanks. I am out of the country now. 

[Ale Vallecchi]

14 minutes ago, Sunil Mathew said:

I will join @Ale Vallecchi, ...keen to know how a recce drive goes..

hope the meeting point and time are same as the original drive ??

 

Hi @Sunil Mathew. Very good. We'll meet at the same meeting point. Thanks

[Pacific]

5 hours ago, Ale Vallecchi said:

Hi @Sunil Mathew. Very good. We'll meet at the same meeting point. Thanks

Tomorrow working day, Friday could work😊

[Andrew McCarthy]

Ciao @Ale Vallecchi, unfortunately I am only slowly recovering from an illness which might still make it a bad idea to drive tomorrow, so I am dropping out now to let somebody take my place from the waiting list.

Have a great drive all of you,

Andrew

[Ale Vallecchi]

Dear Desertnauts

let's prepare our drive tomorrow by sending out a few information about the terrain we'll cross.

The meeting point is on a sabkha (those very flat and wind-swept flat areas between adjacent areas of dunes), just north of Faqa Town, which you can reach making a right turn off the Dubai-Al Ain Road, just before the actual exit to Faqa. Follow the tarmac, lined up by a mix of dunes and camel farms, until you'll see the convoy meeting up.

In general, we'll expect to find soft and warm sand. Therefore, we'll need to deflate accordingly, in my opinion between 14 and 10 PSI (deflate to low PSI's only if you have tires with relatively high and thick walls, while very powerful cars - the big trucks - may deflate a little less).

We'll start the drive entering a set of soft technical dunes located between the proper Faqa "plateau" of ling range cordons, and the newest Solar Park developments (the very visible solar "chimney"). We'll be driving across the soft slip-faces, so we'll minimize the criss-crossing in these area, and will prefer to drive along the dunes as much as possible, to find suitable open corridors between cordons. After sometime, this area will open up, allowing faster driving, and easier crossings. We'll eventually reach one of 2 sabkhas (a nearer and a further one, depending on the convoy's behavior), which we'll use to loop back toward the Faqa Plateau. Here we'll find taller dunes, with some deep bowls, and very long cordons and ridges, that we'll try to ride and cross whenever suitable. We plan to exit just before sunset.

The convoy order, at the moment (barring drop-outs and new entries) looks like the following:

@varunmehndiratta in Second Lead

@Jessica Lambert in place #3

@Paolo Morresi at #4

@DP1011 will be at #5

@FiNaR at #6

@Pierre de Maigret will be in the center of the convoy

@Gerrit Bus will drive at #8

@Felix Obst at #9

@Harshal will take position #10

@Beide Worku will be #11, and

@topgear will Sweep.

The Carnity Radio channel we'll be using is #2 (446.036).

Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow afternoon (please do not be late).

 

[Paolo Morresi]

Thanks Alessandro, I will be there. Can you confirm on the radio channel just to make sure? My #2 is as per the below. No problem to switch the one you suggested,

my 

[Ale Vallecchi]

17 minutes ago, Paolo Morresi said:

Thanks Alessandro, I will be there. Can you confirm on the radio channel just to make sure? My #2 is as per the below. No problem to switch the one you suggested,

my 

Hi @Paolo Morresi. Yes, my mistake, the correct frequency is as indicated above. Thanks for noticing. Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.