munkybizness

… and what a brilliant job getting here too. Congratulations on the promotion @Davie Chase. From my first drive with you, you’re not just a great driver but an excellent team player as well, ready with the shovel and to help when it gets tough for any of us. See you on the sands soon!

@Alphin Aloor, @Looper, @Ashok chaturvedi, @JamesThorn, @Fabien Monleau, @Hasan Wahlan @Waqas Parvez has got a WhatsApp group going to coordinate amongst ourselves. Most of us are camping on the 18th as driving to the point on the day to do a full day drive will be extremely taxing. If you'd like to join the group, please ping Waqas at 0503545183 or myself at 0501718613, and we'll add you in.

@AlexM, @Brette - thank you for the clarity 🙏

Furthermore, for Alhosn to turn GREEN, you must have also taken your booster dose (3rd dose) if it has been more than 6 months since your second dose. I have seen cases last week where even if you had a negative PCR, your Alhosn will not turn green from grey if the booster dose > 6months was not validated.

Congratulations @Antony Abraham! Enjoy the new level

Congratulations @Michel Van Woudenberg! This is where things get so much more fun

@Daniel Yang Supremely well done buddy! We can ride our Y61s again together now See you on the sands soon!

Congratulations @Sree - Fortuner! Enjoy the new level

Congratulations @Yesu Yarlagadda! Enjoy the new level

Congratulations @Rasif ABDUL RAHIM! Well done and enjoy the new level

Congratulations @Rob S! Continue your flying run with more gusto

Well done buddy, and welcome to the level @MMansoor! Supremely well deserved

Supremely well deserved, @Naveen Raj! You're quite the inspiration for many of us with what you do in your car.

@Gaurav - would we do this route from West to East, to take E65 back to AD/Dubai?

I’m in! I hope I get a drive. I will get PCR again next week in anticipation 😎

Sorry for dropping out Doc @M.Seidam! Got pulled into a dinner on Saturday night which will run very late and I don’t want to risk it by not making it. But I have to do the loop with you - at this level - soon!

Green pass on my Alhosn + short convoy: I can’t miss this 😎

@Frederic I've just gotten my Alhosn turn green, so I'm going to make the most of this small window, to join Islam's FB+ in AD instead. Seeing as there are a few drivers with not a single drive this weekend, this should help one of you out. Nobody routes through Mahafiz like Frederic does - you're all in for a treat!

Just checked out the Claymore lights. I’m digging these! Thanks for sharing @Alex Raptor 🙏🏽

I'm in the process of an overlanding build, which will take another year as I do incremental upgrades to see what works and what doesn't. Personally, I prefer the one-at-a-time upgrade to see deficiencies before throwing the kitchen sink at it. For lighting, you can definitely go too far, and we have some members here who could initiate close encounters of the third kind with their arrays 👽 I would separate your lighting needs into two sections: Auxiliary Driving Lights and Camping Lights 1. Auxiliary Driving Lights are any additional lights that aid your visibility off-road to drive better. The three most common mounting points for these lights are the Bumper, A-Pillar and Roofline. a) Bumper The bumper is one of the best places to increase forward visibility because that’s where the headlights are, and are in your direct field of actionable vision. Fog Lights are a great first step to swap out. The housings are already designed so there is limited amount of cutting involved. Mounted low to the ground, and angled outwards, these will give you great spread directly in front of your car for up to 50m. Warm temperature fog-lights such as amber or yellows are a good choice as they don’t reflect off the sand being kicked up as much. LED light bars mounted on the top of the bumper trim or within the grilles are a great location to get a great forward flood spread. LED/Halogen Spotlights can be mounted using bashplates that have integrated bars to mount them. You’ll see many drivers here with F150s mounting Baja LP6/LP9s in this way. b) A-Pillar Smaller (4 to 6 inch) auxiliary lights are commonly mounted on the A-pillar either using the pillar frame or the side mirrors, or through brackets emerging out of the hood. Commonly called side-shooters or ditch lights, this location raises your lights higher up and is a great place to mount lights pointing off to either side. Here, you have to think about terrain. There is a reason why so many drivers in the desert have ditch-lights, and that is because we’re seldom driving on a trail. Since we’re carving out our own path, riding up and down ridges; lateral visibility greatly improves how you react to the surroundings. c) Roof-line Lights mounted on the roofline usually either as a bracket from the A-pillar or on a roof-rack provide the highest point for mounting your additional lights. Usually done using light bars (preferably curved), they will throw the light far and wide. However, lights pointed this high up will bounce off your hood as well as severely impact wind noise on the road. If your car is a daily driver, I would advise against this option. 2. Camping Lights There are two flavours to camping lights – fixed and portable. a) Fixed Camping Lights are traditionally mounted on roof-racks. Additionally, some drivers are also now using LED light strips under the side rooflines. Since your car is not a full wagon, this option will not work so well. b) Portable Camping Lights are what you should rely on primarily. Through telescoping stands, you can connect them to portable lithium ion batteries. Beyond all of this, amperage management is something you have to take into account too. Asking your car battery to supply the power for all of these lights for long periods of time or overnight while you camp is a recipe for disaster. If you don’t have a secondary car, and your battery goes dead, there will be nobody to jumpstart it. Hence, whatever lights you add on, please keep a tab on your voltage and amperage draws as well.

When it comes to the kinetic recovery ropes, err on the side of higher is better. Unlike "flat towing ropes", the way these ropes work is that the strain in a hard tug especially for a car lodged in deep sand is translated through the rope and the elasticity of the rope better dissipates that energy when it rebounds. The last thing you want is for the rope to snap pulling the bumper, tow hook or just itself free. This has catastrophic results with these projectiles taking out windscreens and rear-screens. When towing a car, you wouldn't use a kinetic recovery rope, but a flat towing rope instead. This is because these ropes are more taut and better at towing than tugging. For our purposes, I would start with a high quality kinetic recovery rope (high breaking strain - AOR level preferably) and then as you progress to the higher levels, get a custom industrial strength tow rope cut for you at Dragon Mart for that one off occasion when you may need to tow somebody.

Congratulations @Han! Enjoy the new level 💨

There is a similar post on this from a year ago that has some valuable insight - @Frederic can shed more light (as he has on that post) https://carnity.com/forums/topic/15476-non-gcc-spec-cars-pros-cons

It takes a certain amount of bravado (or blindness as @Srikumar puts it) to take on a night drive. With the reduced visibility comes increased uncertainty on what comes next. But seeing how the convoy snaked through Qudra last night, one would mistake you all to have driven many times over, offroad in the dark. Any trepidation that each of you were feeling was certainly not visible. With very few refusals, every single driver last night should feel absolutely chuffed with themselves. In the few refusals we did see, it was the lack of momentum which is usually exaggerated during night drives due to the fear of not having any orientation on what's beyond. It is completely normal, and something you'll just get better with over time through abandon Firstly, thank you Doc @Chaitanya D (a doctor both for the sands and the hands) for a smooth rolling track. Your eye (or blindness) for finding the gems in the dark are exceptional. I hope the convoy here someday get to see you lead us through Lisailli in the dark to send our adrenaline even higher off the charts. With plenty of little breaks and chit chats (ones we missed at the height of restrictions through last year), you gave the convoy the opportunity to mingle too. I met so many new faces last night. @Srikumar, it was a pleasant surprise to have you join the convoy and get over that itch. You (and a certain someone who still wants to remain a mystery) added such great humour and banter to our comms. I particularly liked seeing your Jeep show up like a shepherd giving the back-end of the convoy a beacon on where not to stray. My radio was given a stern talking to after I came home for failing to hear you. It has been grounded until the next weekend. I absolutely love your brand @Looper, and how you're geeking out over this. That sweatshirt also looked super comfy. I can't wait to see you lead your brand of looping drives in the near future. To everybody else in the convoy (including that one radio giving us a live feed of your cold air gurgles), it was a pleasure to drive with all of you. At the back, we were happy with how little churn you were throwing up for us. @Rob S, you drove really well and as you've seen, you don't need a ton of lights but instead shades if you get put in @Sanjay Malik's position. @Roger K - I loved seeing your Cabela's tee. It brought back a flood of memories from driving south from Ann Arbor on 23 to my fix of adrenaline at Cedar Point. And finally, a special shout out to @Jessica Lambert for playing an excellent SL, on a night drive nonetheless. With barely any rerouting, you set an excellent pace and rhythm for the remainder of the convoy. I look forward to seeing all of you, out on the sands soon 🐵

When you arrive at the entry of the track, there is a water puddle, please go around from the right. It’s easy to join the track