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My drives journey has hit a milestone. I have scored half century this past Friday. While my drive count shows 51 on the forum - I was absent on one afternoon drive, which was my 2nd drive of the day. These are a snapshots of my drives till date. Looking forward to many many more. Any and all criticisms are welcome.

Dear Desertnauts - @Zixuan Huang - Charlie, @Abdul Rafay-S, @Chinthaka Ruwan, @Pierre de Maigret, @Charbel, @Anoop Nair, @darren thompson, @Ammar Naji, @Chris Wing, @TT_Dubai - Welcome to the 100th Carnity drive celebration. While I usually provide a detailed preview of the drive, this time the briefing is simple: have fun, and enjoy together the most beautiful parts of Murqab and particularly Lisaili. We'll start easy, albeit with a brisk pace, on the wide and tall dunes of Murqab, then cross a more technical area (this time through the dunes, without using the sand track we call "the Highway to Solar Park"), to finally reach the Lisaili plateau, where we'll proceed, exploring its inner reaches, looking for camel caravans, or aiming for groups of trees, until we'll exit at Solar Park. The next instructions will provide the convoy order and radio channel. Until then, enjoy your week.

Hello @Chris Wing @Ammar Naji @Pierre de Maigret @Arshad Roojee @Sunil Mathew @Nihal17 @Zed & @Frederic I hope you got some good rest after the long and challenging drive. I would like to thank everyone for joining and coming early for the drive. We started the drive from Murquab at a slow pace to warm up and to avoid vegetation before reaching the play area nearby. After which, we crossed a technical area in order to enjoy the dunes in Lisaili area and all of you coped with all the challenges thrown to you. The first half of the drive went smoothly and observing all drivers performing well, I decided to increase the pace and the hurdles. We got the opportunity for some more crisscrossing and few easy ridge riding where all of us got a feel of riding on the ridge. Towards the last hour of the drive, we got most of the refusal and stuck leading to an extension to a night drive until we could exit in Qudra. Overall, It was a very good mixture of different nature of terrain and challenges. We encountered from small tight dunes to tall long wide range dunes as well. We got few refusals and stuck from which we get to learn by self recovering, observing and also helping. All refusal and stuck are unique, which always give us the chance to take something new back as our experience. It was so nice to see how Ammar was surfing through the desert with his massive car, keep it up. I am very impressed by the team spirit that all of you showed to help in managing different recoveries and especially when at one point there was 2 refusals at the same time to recover. All of you were proactively getting your shovels, offer for help and took turns to shovel . It was great to see Zed showing interest in learning and performing rope recovery which he had the opportunity to practise and it was executed perfectly. Last but not least, big thanks to Frederic for his exceptional support and for always being inspiring. Thank you Chris for being a great second lead and your assistance with recoveries. Take care, See you all in some other drive, Stay Safe.

Dear Desertnauts - @Mario Cornejo, @Jorge Stepniak Felippe, @MUHAMMAD Kashif RAZZAQ, @Craig Finlayson, @Thomas Varghese, @Melenany, @Amir Amiri, @Kalahari - Welcome to the 100th Carnity drive celebration. While I usually provide a detailed preview of the drive, this time the briefing is simple: have fun, and enjoy together the most beautiful parts of the Sharjah and Dubai sands. As some of the most fun IM drives we did have been the "Long Range Patrol" series, I have thought it fitting for a celebration to bring on a new installment of this series. To get us in the mood for a hot, dusty, afternoon I'd like to share with you a bit of the history of the LDRG: "For weeks, the LRDG carried out reconnaissance patrols in the heart of the Libyan desert, penetrating enemy territory through the ‘Qattara Depression’, an astonishing natural feature 150 miles long, half as broad, and 450 feet below the Mediterranean at its deepest point. It was a pin-prick on the earth’s surface but a crueler, more desolate spot would be hard to imagine, particularly in July under the midday sun." Now, we hope to find our route more hospitable than the Qattara depression, nonetheless we'll move as fast and as silently as possible through the dunes of Murqab (and a new route at that), the Lisaili Plateau, and onward as much as the sunlight will allow us to, across Solar Park and Bab al Shams long range dunes. The next instructions will provide the convoy order and radio channel. Until then, enjoy your week.

Dear Desertnauts - @FARAZ MOHAMMED, @Damiru Dharmadasa, @James Thorn, @Jason Grima, @Yawa, @Alexander Holodny, @shu yang, @SUNIL KUMAR, @Senthil Kumar - Welcome to my 100th Carnity drive. While I usually provide a detailed preview of the drive, this time the briefing is simple: have fun, and enjoy together the most beautiful parts of Qudra. There will be dunes, of course, as well as animals, trees, rock formations and lakes. We'll start easy, using the basic off-roading skills, progressing to slightly more complicated terrains, based on the convoy's behavior. Bring your cameras, as we'll try to make this a more photographic drive then others, taking some time to shoot some of the sights we'll drive by. The next instructions will include the details of how to reach the meeting point (which is a little tricky), and the convoy order. Until then, enjoy your week.

Goutam @Goutam Watteau @Watteau varunmehndiratta @varunmehndiratta Dodi Syahdar @Dodi Syahdar Ashok chaturvedi @Ashok chaturvedi Gok Krish @Gok Krish Tariq Carrimjee @Tariq Carrimjee Niki @Niki Kalahari @Kalahari The question on everyone's lips: the decision to join this drive, brave or stupid? Middle of summer, middle of the most technical dune complex in Dubai, long way to Last Exit or Faqa, incredible high dunes and ridges waiting to be conquered, or ... What can I tell you about the plan. We need to take into account that the convoy has a mixed car makeup, from the largest to the smallest and that this is an IM drive and not Extreme. So ... I am looking for a routing that's going to be challenging at a technical level, has enough thrills and adrenalin to keep everyone happy and leaves us still able to get out of the sand in time for Spicy Village opening up for breakfast. Will we succeed? Difficult to tell. Everyone on the drive is has excellent control of their car and experience in IM. It's a great area in which to play and challenge ourselves. There's no-one with reliability issues on their car. So expect criss crossing, riding ridges and small technical areas where a slip will lead to a world of pain ... I give you: Lisaili.

@AlexM when winter drives do start again and you have to wake at 5:30 to make the 7am meet point - you will feel spoilt with sleep consider the summer as conditioning for making you appreciate the winter even more. My experience - even 2 hours sleep is better than 0 so don't sacrifice that small period of rest thinking it would be hard waking up. The closing 1 hours of our drives are the usual periods where we find most of the refusals (when you are stuck but can self recover without leaving the car) or stuck (when you will need shovel/rope/winch/helicopter support). The lack of concentration/tiredness is the usually cause and those 2 hours sleep could be the difference here. My other experience having had my first taste of summer drives with Carnity this year - waking at 3am (with limited sleep), returning home around 11am - I am struggling to function for the rest of the day. I found myself exhausted by early afternoon and not much fun (too tired to play with kids etc) for the rest of the day. I have had to take 2 weeks off driving recently.... WELL each of those 2 Fridays i felt an over-whelming sense of under-achievement.... I may have slept more but by 9am when the kids crawl out of bed - i was thinking.... i would be airing up by now. By 10am when they have finished breakfast and finally awake, i was thinking if i don't wash the car, i would be home by now! Basically its a pain, its a struggle to wake, it a struggle to function for the rest of the day HOWEVER it feels better being tired than feeling a sense of under achievement... so much so i have got myself back on the wagon and doing a Friday drive (family are complaining but i think i can manage that).

First of all, welcome to the Carnity family @AlexM. I’d like to see your reaction on this thread in a month from now 😎 When the summer started in Dubai we started pulling the morning drives to earlier hours gradually to avoid the heat; 6:00 then 5:30 then 5:00 and now 4:30am. You will see how we try to be always on time and expect the same from all drivers. Every time we changed to earlier hours we expect people to come late by 5 or 10 mins.. to my surprise I arrive at the meeting point at 4:30 to find everyone already there with tires inflated, flags up and ready to go 🤣 which means they arrived at least 20mims earlier than the set time. so as explained by our friends above, once you try it a couple of times, you will not need to set any alarms to wake you up hope to meet you soon on the sand!

Its soaring temperatures during summer even around 3 or 4 pm which puts a lot of load on your car off road . Think about getting out to shovel or recover a car in this hot summer, its sweltering 😨 to say the least.(almost touching 50 degrees sometimes) We all do plan afternoon drives but , as all mentioned the leads and members timing preferences incline more towards the mornings (especially in summer ). Nonetheless, dont worry we do plan afternoon drives and sometimes weekday drives too in afternoons .Come winter and you will have plenty of options and timings available to enjoy as many drives as you can.

Thank you @Anish S , @Chris Wing & @Frederic for leading the drive, it was well worth it coming from Abu Dhabi 🙂. Glad to help anytime, the rated recovery points and the towing power of Land Cruiser should be put to use whenever the right opportunity appears 😅 Looking forward to driving with you guys again on Saturday afternoons (pending wife's approval 😂)

@Rizwanm2 Liz go bro we can drop stones together along with Fredric and new ppl 😊

Thanks @Kailasfor choosing a creative route like this and trusting the team to deliver......Endless Crisscrossing over long crested dunes. It is a long video that captures the color transformation that occurs between Dawn and Sunrise and then fully blown Sun. I have not edited some sections of the drive though there is no action in them but action is substituted by the lovely relief that comes from the appearance of trees, scattered clouds, blue sky bordering the yellow horizons etc...The 180 deg camera capture gives it an added effect! Welcome your comments in the Youtube site. Thanks @marks, great to follow u the 2nd lead...re-routing at times was useful .... @Archibald JurdiGood to meet you...Good to know you. @Lawrence_Chehimi @Goutam @Thomas Varghese @Dodi Syahdar @varunmehndiratta @Ashok chaturvediGreat to drive with you guys!

@Niki love it when a thread turns a bit more technical 😄, so I'm assuming the Bluetooth dongle you used is this Veepeak OBDCheck BLE. This one probably has an HM10 chip that allows Serial over Bluetooth Low Energy. Apple is more lenient to BLE, notable because of its iBeacon devices, so they allow more things than the Classic Bluetooth. The caveat is: Serial over BLE is capped at 2 KB / second data transfer rate (see experiments & performance charts here) while the Classic Bluetooth Serial Port Profile Specification says data is available at 128 KB / second . The usage will be: 1. If you're just checking for Diagnostic Code and Clearing the Check Engine Light (CEL) signals, using the BLE dongle with iOS is fine. I would be cautious using this dongle if a Jeeper is calibrating his speedometer after changing tire size using JSCAN . The data transfer is capped at 2 KB / second, and the calibration takes 5 minutes... if things go wrong, well, someone may break their Jeep's ECU 😅 2. If you have bigger bandwidth, you can send one time a data of size 128 KB in just one second. If your bandwidth is capped at 2 KB / second, that same 128 KB data chunk (e.g. real-time engine temperature, transmission temp, oil pressure etc.) will take 64 seconds to travel from car to phone. Besides delay, this is what we call a "chatty application" in software development, and thus instead of achieving Low Energy, your phone will drain more battery 🙂

Even for me its a new location !😁 No worries, we will make it fun !

Hi Islam, considering I'm wayyy down in the waitlist, I'm going to swallow the bitter pill and get a pcr done for @Frederic drive in Abudhabi. Kindly remove me from the waitlist.

@Lorenzo Candelpergher I second @Zed advice - JScan software and then work back from this to identify the OBD2 sensor to use. I recommend going for a Bluetooth v4 module as a min (i preferred to avoid the wifi variant as you can have concurrent bluetooth connections vs a single wifi). The BlueDriver you linked is a great unit and fast - just check it is compatible with JScan. That said - I don't think this will solve your original issues of the warning light - however will allow you to reset it yourself. Sometimes this sensor can trigger if the steering column is off center? however if it was that i suspect the garage would have corrected immediately (link) There's a separate group on Carnity for OBD2 fans where folks have helped me setup up the dials and what useful (and what isn't). Below is my current dash during drives and every few weeks i just run the scanner to see if any error codes have been picked up.

Congrats @Zed.

Guess it boils down to personal choice. For the sheer passion for drives and family, have adapted to the morning drive regime with afternoons/evenings then free for the family. Personally speaking, witnessing dawn and sunrise in wide open desert is worth the effort getting up early. Nine plus months on into this sport, I eagerly look forward to Friday morning drives, at times even saturdays! But that’s me as @Gaurav, and @Zixuan Huang - Charlie have said, the experience is so exciting and addictive, one keeps coming back for more. then there are afternoon and evening drives which we saw a lot of last couple of months. As @Fredericmentioned, availability of our wonderful leads plays an important part, I would say hang around, the club provides ample opportunities catering to most, if not all, needs.

@Goutam first of all congratulations on your milestone! What a trove of information you just published, thank you! You are the Edward Tufte of off-roading ! Looks like as intermediate you've met more new fellow drivers by joining newbie drive events, Al Qudra the most popular location for drives, Al Faqa from where you drive with fastest pace, most drives on a Friday and in the morning, and Jeeps seem the most frequent brand in Carnity drives since you started. If everyone's profiles was updated you could even pull a chart with the drive with most nationalities in it (the United Nations drive?) 😎 Again, felicitations on reaching the 50th drive, wishing you many more to come! Wishing you safe drives ahead.

@Ale Vallecchi I truly wish I could join one of your ‘century drives’ (this one being my fav!) .. alas I will wait for the trip report to relive the experience and look forward to joining and supporting you towards 200! Many congrats on this milestone and thank you for supporting me and so many others on your route to 100! have fun all and be sure to make it a celebration!

The trick is to think in these few seconds about magical and mystical terrain, dunes, steep slopes, and desert mirages.

Congrats on 100 Drives, looking forward to celebrating the occasion with you and the rest of the group

yes bro @M.Seidam i always want to drive in abu dhabi, but this PCR is freaking me out. 😬 but im very happy to take DPI if its permitted. 😃 my second dose was on 16th May and haven't done any PCR since 29 Jan 2021. @Frederic looks like im eligible for a DPI.

Hey @Rizwanm2 ! DPI is possible yes. I personally prefer taking PCR test, as we have seen DPI can come back as inconclusive result, and wouldn't allow me to enter AD.

If 28 days passed to your sec dose then your PCR would be valid for 7 days multiple entries 😊

We'll surely try to pass by and drop some stones in the lake

@Anish Scan you please wait list me for second drive

It seems new location for all of us 😊 this I would call the spirit of the adventurer .. exploring the unknown and what is beyond 😎… viva Carnity

Congratulazioni @PaoloMaraziti, a well deserved promotion, especially considering you earned it after that defining moment where, in the aftermath of a difficult night drive, you were seriously inclined towards taking a break from off-roading for some time but eventually decided to keep hitting the sand every weekend to cover bad memories with the dust of newer and better ones. It was the right choice and this promotion proves it. Kudos!

Thanks everyone, all makes sense. Need to start planning for the morning!

Dear @Lorenzo Candelpergher, 500aed seems expensive, double that and you will probably get the Autel brand which most professional garages use 😂 I suggest to use the reverse-engineer approach from the software to the hardware instead: I asked my Jeep friend and he said to use JScan software. Once you know which software you want to use, look for the "supported scanners" page. The "Highly Recommended" scanner for JScan which is iCar Pro is only 100 dirhams on Amazon ☺️ http://jscan.net/supported-and-not-supported-obd-adapters/ As for the original idea to get it, the tool will help towards it but not the root cause: the car ECU will gladly handover the scanner all the diagnostic error codes that it currently has. Next you need to download the Jeep Maintenance Manual to find out what Jeep dealers need to do when diagnosing the codes. Sometimes 3 errors are caused by just 1 error: I had multiple ABS errors and 1 wheel sensor, turns out replacing the wheel sensor eliminates all the ABS errors too 😁 It could be fun, it could be frustrating, nevertheless you'll learn something about how your car works ☺️

Congrats bro @Farouq Owdeh, keep on revving that 5.7L Hemi beast to the next Intermediate 😁

Congrats @PaoloMaraziti 👍🏻 looking forward to driving with you in FB+ 😊

@Frederic Data god found new best friend. Well done @Goutam on half century, wish you many more. Amazing data slicing and dicing.

I don't know why I brought the subaru to the car wash... We are going again to get dirty 😂😂

Congrats @Zedwell deserved..

The waitlist priority is as follows: 1. @Ranjan Das (2nd Drive) 2. @Chinthaka Ruwan (2nd Drive) 3. @JeromeFJ (2nd Drive) 4. @Zixuan Huang - Charlie (2nd Drive) 5. @Lakshmi Narasimhan (2nd Drive)

Most of us weren't morning person incl. myself but things changed after the first drive. Force yourself for first drive and soon you will be unable to sleep on thu night, again and start checking alarm 5 min before the set time. 😀

Zed always mentioned to me about dragon mart deals …… may be we can meet up in this AD drive and get some first hand Chinese dragon mart friendship deals 😜…….

Its nice to hear that I was also one of your inspiration. Now you have forced me to be more responsible and sensible.

Thanks again @Anish S, @Frederic and everyone else for the wonderful drive yesterday. It was filled with challenge, adventure and fun. Also got a taste of the night driving experience as well. I've been on your third fewbie drive so far @Anish S, and each of them has been slightly different from each other... the common theme however was the fun i had on all of them. Keep up the great work.

Had my first pop-out in previous Intermediate drive through Lisali with you Richard. Need to break through it to get over that feeling. Looking forward.

Congratulations @PaoloMaraziti for reaching the Fewbie Plus Level with Carnity Offroad Club. Looking forward to seeing you growing further and helping others to learn the art of offroading in a safe environment. Please make sure your Carnity user profile is always updated with all the latest Emergency contact details. P.S. Trip lead might deny your participation if you don't have required off-road gear. FEWBIE PLUS Drives Attended (Indicative) Minimum 10 Fewbie drives are required within last 6 months for Fewbie Plus promotion. What you'll learn Advance dune and sand reading Advance recovery techniques Rocking and crawling to make path Learn to flatten/compact soft sand patch Self recovery from crest Advance side sloping and long hill climb Advance ridge riding and criss crossing Advance control over technical dunes Slightly faster pace desert driving FULLY control and avoid fishtailing Never fight or challenge gravity Skills required Enthusiastic and positive attitude Willingness to learn and help others Extremely attentive and focused while driving Car Worthiness Any 4x4 vehicle with low range gearing Suitable approach and departure angle Bash plate and skid plate protected Off-road gear required Safety flag, tire deflator, tire pressure gauge, shovel, fire extinguisher, medical kit, radio (walkie-talkie), air compressor. Drive teamwork Manage second lead and sweep positions upon request Intuitive and proactive to support Trip Lead Observe recoveries and offer help, when needed Drive Joining Join Newbie, Fewbie and Fewbie Plus drives Forum participation Active participation on the forum Share drive experience + feedback Share drive pictures in the gallery Post trip report after the drive

I guess it will be a bit of a change for me... I dig the idea of the morning drive, but waking up at 3am when you get to sleep at 1am is a bit of a challenge.. may as well don't sleep at all like the uni times before the exam. how do others manage? this goes back to the whole "larks vs owls" chronotype discussion, but it seems that the club caters for the morning birds. Happy to be proved wrong.

Hi @Mus_hus78, Im sorry I dont get you, you want me to buy something from DM for you?

Congrats Zed, see you soon in AD !

Can't wait to celebrate this milestone with you @Ale Vallecchi!

Congratulations @Zed

@Chris Wing @Ammar Naji @Pierre de Maigret @Arshad Roojee @Sunil Mathew @Nihal17 @Zed @Frederic Hello Everyone, I hope you are enjoying the weekend. Please find the convoy list below, we will be using Radio Channel Number 3 (44605625). Looking forward to see you all in few hours.