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Good evening, Thank you for joining this drive, for your attentiveness, patience and feedback. All of which were very much appreciated. This was my first time leading a convoy and it was an amazing experience once we hit the sand. You all drove extremely well and I'm fortunate to have had you on this inaugural lead drive. We had minor refusals and successful reattempts though these were few in numbers. Everyone showed up on time, which is always appreciated especially now it's getting hot out there. We started with a briefing and then entered the sands following a south and westerly route towards Sweihan though our planned exit point was Nahel Pumping Station. We started with some warm-up dunes and then crossed a usual track in order to get to the wonderful stretch of mostly clean dunes ranging in heights from medium to a few tall ones. We enjoyed some bowls, ridges and tall hill climbs and then played for a while in a technical patch before resuming our direction back to Sweihan. We then took a Sabkha route to a sand track leading us out to the Nehel Pumping Station. Thank you @Looper for your guidance and support on this drive. Very much appreciated. Also, thanks to @J-P L for a strong Centre-Forward and to @Aser for Sweeping to make sure we were all together and accounted for. You had great communication with me regarding the status of the rear. It was great to meet you @Diego and @Johannes Roux. Welcome to Carnity. You both drove really well today! With much experience already, @vinayak n, @Abhishek Chikara, and @ChrisW allowed me to focus on my first lead. See you on my next partial lead drive next Saturday with @Frederic. Have a great week everyone! Here is our route and some stats from our drive today. We covered an amazing 45km in 3 hours which is pretty good for a FB drive. The elevation profile shows some decent amount of dune explorations and some really nice hill climbs.

@Frederic, what a fantastic drive we enjoyed today! Thank you so so much, it had all the ingredients! Good scenery, a variety of dunes and challenges, a nice mix of stucks that taught us a thing or two, tremendous fun on longer slopes and good driving between them. Just awesome! @Vanessa8580 very nice meeting you and it was really good driving behind you, tried to learn from your well-chosen lines. @essam ibrahim Thanks for the sweep, and allowing us the entertainment of seeing your 409 horses race uphill 😊 And let’s not forget a thank you to the rest of the group for being such good company ☝️👍🏻👍🏻

Thanks a ton for this one @Emanuel @Looper @J-P [email protected] lines ...clean dunes ..was fun..just enjoyed the climbs & sideys..Nahel l is beautiful with no cris cross ..such a joy to drive with this convoy thanks everyone!

Thank you all for joining this morning! Our little concept of surrounding the solar park was not the easiest thing to do. We first headed deep into Faqa as i wanted us to have some fun in the bigger dunes. As the sand is very soft these days this meant a few times we had to unleash all the horses we had in our stable Eventually i had to start heading north, and we know in the closer vicinity of the solar park the dunes get smaller and smaller, and with lots of vegetation around it. It meant doing some yoga poses and dealing with some refusals here and there, but nothing @Vanessa8580 couldn't deal with. Her unwavering support kept us going, crawling through the tiny gaps and bumpy passages. But suddenly the solar panels started to emerge and we knew the exit wasn't too far. Surprisingly this is where we found a big KIA SUV with a guy adament to drive to the nearby military camp, but found himself stuck on a soft patch of the gatch track. We gave him a slight tug and @Mahesh_ was so kind to share mobile numbers so in case he had another issue he could still get in touch with us. The amount of construction at the solar park surprised me as it has been a while since i was there. We had to do a lot of loops and drive parallel to the bicycle tracks for a while to find a clean exit where we could park and inflate. We clocked an impressive 61kms. You guys and gals all drove amazing. I threw some challenges at you but you all kept a smile and pushed on. I was a bit unlucky that 5mins into the drive my AC gave up. In the early morning this was no issue but towards the end i felt like a boiled egg 😁 Maybe that's why i couldn't find a proper exit at the Solar park See you all soon in the sand again ! Wikiloc | DXB-Faqa to Solar. Trail

Thank you @Ishak for the great drive we had. Very well paced and beautiful lines! I really enjoyed it and it was a pleasure to be present at your first drive as a lead. To all the others, thank you for the company, it was a great morning! I put the group photo in the Gallery. Hope you enjoy!

Five years passed since I joined Carnity offroad club and I still remember: I still remember my first ever absolute newbie Drive which didn’t last more than 15 min when I nose dived my grand Cherokee and busted my radiator and how Gaurav drove us effortlessly to safety. I still remember my first drive ( three weeks after ) as a second lead with my Current Xterra along with my son Adam who’s is now grown and will be going to college this summer . I still remember my first criss cross as first Fb when Ale drove in-front of me showing me how to do it safely . I still remember my promotion to intermediate level and my first entry with my Son Abdallah to Qudra discovering his Abdallah Dune and his first sand slide . I still remember the passion which is still growing inside of me drive after drive and taking different forms all along . I still remember my first drive as an advisor and it was on June 18th my birthday 🎂 and it was a night drive chasing Sri Kumar as a second lead @pink rock 🪨 I still remember the first DCT and how the 🦊 team performed . I still remember like yesterday the three sessions of Leaders lead , my first partial lead and my first ever lead of a fewbie in the mystical Lisaili Desert . I still remember my promotion to marshal level and my first newbie drive in Qudra Desert . I still remember my first Sweihan lead and the the nasty roll over of one of our fellow driver friend and how we all went through it alive. I still remember the epic recovery at top of big red from midnight till just before sunrise. I still remember my own Solo drives with its pros and cons I still remember all the good ppl around whom I learned a lot from and still learning . Last but not least I realized that the most important is the camaraderie and connecting to ppl is what Carnity is all about . Cheers ❤️

It was truly heartwarming to read every word you wrote. Your ability to recall each moment with such clarity and detail is nothing short of extraordinary, clearly a reflection of both your sharp memory and your deep connection to the experiences we've shared. To be honest, that day I drove your JGC with the radiator broken, I genuinely thought it might be the last time we'd cross paths in the desert. But when you returned, this time in your Xterra, I knew, without a doubt, that you were hooked for life. The sand had claimed you, as it does with the best of us. Over the years, we’ve come to recognize a simple yet powerful "sand metric" out here: if someone walks away after their first serious setback, chances are, they’re gone for good. But the ones who return, who rise from the dust after the hit, those are the ones who never leave the sand behind. And you, Doc, are a textbook case of the latter. It’s always a pleasure to see you and share a convoy with you. Your composed presence, crystal-clear communication, and natural leadership make every drive smoother and every challenge more enjoyable. You lead not just with direction, but with calm confidence and that makes all the difference. Looking forward to many more unforgettable drives together.

Dear @M.Seidam what a fantastic overview of achievements. Your heart has been in this game from the start, and your unwavering passion for the sand shines still every week. We are blessed to have you with us. I am looking forward to another 5 years of your fantastic drives, meetups, and camaraderie. You are totally right. Everything we do as Carnity is building a community. Without the many members we have there would be no joy, no laughter, and nothing to remember but the shifting sand.

Thanks @Ishak your lines were really good today, allowing everyone to keep up a good flowing pace! Must feel good to have the 1st one under your belt!

Hello the dune bashers... This drive was very special to me, it was my first time officially leading a desert convoy with Carnity! Everyone showed up on time, ready and eager, which gave us a great start and set the tone for a smooth and enjoyable morning. There was one blue FJ at the meeting point without flag and radio 😁, he even joined the briefing!. Fortunately, just before we moved out, @Looper asked "who is in the blue FJ?", we explained to him the situation, removed the flag, took the radio, and kindly sent him home. we started with warm-up, riding small ridges and gradually moving to longer ridges toward the pink rock. We climbed the dunes slowly before pink rock, took a nice break with group photo and then start again with rainbows on the pink rock. all of this was great preparation before climbing the big reds. We crossed the pink rock with ease, then continue toward the big red with some nice side-ies and climbs along the way. Finally we reached the BIG Reds, I tried twice and could not make it because there was a tricky turn, then we took one track on the right next to the ATVs, and we had another climbs. Everyone drove fantastically, we had some minor refusals but the self recoveries were excellent. We also did some fun looping as I copied from the owner @Looper to see how the convoy moving and thank you for the feedback. well done @Danie for your first fewbie drive, you kept up with the pace effortlessly. Great self recovery @khurramm! Awesome driving @Paul Eldho with the Xterra Excellent handling of that big LC on the ridge riding @Kirill K, hope there is no major issue on the underbody. For the Fb+ and Int @J-P L @Jose Luis Campos @Johannes Roux @Faraz94 @Andrei S @Andrew John Melvill @Zulfikhar Naiyar its always a pleasure driving with you again and again, hope you guys enjoyed it. See you all on Saturday on my 2nd partial lead 🦾

@Ishaktoday was the most fun and exciting drive I have had till date - period. Congrats again on your first drive as a lead. I hope to join many more. @LooperThanks for your guidance - really appreciate it. This was our first meeting. Hope to see you again soon.

Thanks for a lovely morning! For anyone interested, here’s my ratchet torque wrench. It’s dropped 40 dirhams since I bought it: https://amzn.eu/d/9husvEe

Few more pics, way back from guest house

I have some views @Josh S, but I should caveat the following by saying that I’m not an experienced sand off-roader or Jeep driver! I do however have a technical background and have driven various car setups and terrains over the years. I have a Jeep JK with a six speed manual and 3.8L engine, which is fairly notorious for being uninspiring at the best of times. The powerband really comes in above 3000 RPM - much less and you can easily start to have decaying RPM on an uphill section or soft sand, and sadly 5000 RPM is pretty much where you top out for power and torque; so the useful power window is narrow. After my first few drives on sand (pre-Carnity) with this car, I was worried that I’d made a bad decision. On technical dunes it was incredibly difficult to drive slow enough in 4H to keep behind folk driving technical dunes, and on faster sections it was a continual swap between first and second car - often with shifts being required mid-manoeuvre! Hard work, not much fun. I then did the bad thing - I did a drive in 4L. Wow…it was much easier; suddenly now third gear was my default starting gear and I had a lot more control available to me by coming up and down from there. Staying in the useful power band was easy. But…the transfer case really doesn’t want to be driving at high speed…you will kill the planetary gears eventually. What that did was to set me off wondering why that is - and this is what I found. - The default Jeep Wrangler Sport has a final drive ratio of 3.21 - so in order you have engine, transfer case, gearbox, final drive (ring and pinion), wheels. What this means is that the car is biased to have less RPM at high speed, whereas on sand (and given the gutless engine), we want more of the RPM at lower speed. Selecting 4L does that. - The first gear on this particular JK is very long; it covers a really wide speed range. Coupled with a low final drive ratio, it makes it hard work…you can’t really crawl, and you end up sticking with first gear until quite high speed. What can be done about this? Good news is that you have options. You can change the final drive ratio to a variety of different options. This is quite common in the US where the rock-crawling crowd like to run really big tyres, and you need to shift the RPMs around. I did some maths using the transmission data sheets, and what I found is that the golden 2/3/4th gears in 4L could be approximately replicated as 1/2/3 in 4H if I swapped the rack and pinion from 3.21 to 4.56. You can also go to 4.88 and 5.21 if you want your 4H first gear to be a crawling gear - the caution just being that you’ll be cruising on the highway at high RPMs (…as is often the case with engineering issues, you can only optimise for one thing at a time!). Circa five thousand dirham later I now have a Jeep I enjoy driving on sand, and the lingering thought that I perhaps bought the wrong car in the first place…but we learn. This car isn’t my daily driver, so optimising it for the low end worked for me - and I just enjoy drifting along at 100-120kph on the main road.

Hey @Looper unfortunately I need to drop out too

@Emanuel @Looper hey guys unfortunately I need to drop out, I was hoping to have more study done for my final exam on Monday apologies for the inconvenience