_luke_

Welcome @JeepInTheSand. Great popping colour! Looking forward to meeting you in the sand!

Have fun today boys 👏💪 @Mike M. @Mark B @Imran Asghar

Congratulations 👏 👏 👏

Dubai Venue for me. @Frederic

Congrats on the promotion @Thomas54675

Congrats @Paul Eldho

I feel like you already stepped into this role a while ago supporting drives..😁 very happy to see you on the team mate 👏👏👏

Well deserved @Ishak 😁 Let's drive together again soon

UPDATE 20251019: The Final Passage At dawn, the engines roared to life — ten vehicles, ten shadows against the rising sun. No hesitation. No words. Only the low hum of radios and the hiss of tires biting into untouched sand. We crossed the threshold of the anomaly without fanfare. No sudden flash, no shift in gravity — only a subtle change in the light, a soft distortion in the air that none of our instruments could quantify. And then, silence. The terrain defied expectation: sweeping ridgelines, glassy bowls, dunes shaped with unnatural precision. The sand moved like water under the tires, yet held firm beneath our wheels. Every crest, every descent, felt orchestrated — as if someone, or something, had designed it for those who dared to find it. We drove deeper until our coordinates folded into themselves — the maps looping, recalibrating endlessly. Then, at last, we understood. The anomaly wasn’t danger. It was preservation. A secret vault of perfect terrain, hidden from the world, untouched by man’s noise or mapping. By 1000, we turned back — not because we had to, but because we knew enough. The desert had shown us what it wished to reveal. Each of us took something home — a small fragment of spiral shrll, a handful of fine red sand, a single image burned into memory. The Khatim Anomaly remains. Waiting. Watching. And for those who seek it next — it will decide what to show. Thanks to everyone who attended. You all drove amazingly. It was smooth and flowing! Congrats to @Zsolt and @Dan S on pulling off a perfect first FB+ See you all in the sand for another adventure sometime soon 😁 @Dan S @Zsolt @Aser @Krinesh @ChrisW @Diego @Sam Selim @nithish468 @Abhishek Chikara

The desert has already decided @JC_E and @vinayak n can't unravel the mystery. Dreams of the past, or images of the future.... The spiral shell is still haunting me

Updated convoy

UPDATE 20251018: THE CONVOY ASSEMBLES The team is complete. The drive locked. After a week of hesitation and second-guessing, the final roster has been confirmed. Twelve of us in total — each one handpicked, each one aware that this journey may not end as it begins. @Dan S @Diego @Zsolt @Krinesh @vinayak n @nithish468 @Sam Selim @Abhishek Chikara @JC_E @Aser @ChrisW There’s a strange stillness in camp today. The air feels thick, electric. Even the desert seems to be holding its breath. The coordinates are loaded, the supplies stowed, and the engines will roar at first light. Tomorrow, we enter the anomaly. For now, I sit outside my tent, watching the dunes shimmer, thinking of the face, the spiral, and the dreams that will not leave me. Everything feels inevitable — as if the desert itself has been waiting for us. I will be posting the convoy tonight. We will meet at 06:00 with full tanks of gas, deflated and ready for briefing. Channel 8

UPDATE 20251017: 02:00 - THE PERIMETER Under the cover of darkness, @ChrisW and I set out ahead of the main team to perform a partial reconnaissance along the perimeter of the anomaly. The region in question now shows as a dark shadow region in GAIAGPS labelled as “unmapped.” Among the crew, it’s earned a different name — the Khatim Anomaly. When arriving for fuel supplies at ADNOC 891, my vehicle was suddenly rendered inert. ChrisW, myself and 2 mechanics worked on it to discover the battery had been mysteriously drained beyond a recoverable limit requiring replacement. Once regaining power, We stayed on the outer ridgelines, keeping distance from the boundaries. The terrain is enticing, low vegetation, large long range dunes, but deceptively calm — long soft gradients of wind-shaped sand, not a single tyre mark, no camel prints, not even the remnants of a trail. The dunes feel… untouched, as if nothing has crossed them in years. Perhaps ever. Yet the paths leading toward the anomalous zone remain perfectly accessible — firm ground, navigable slopes, no apparent danger. And still, something in the air made us hesitate. The silence was too complete. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath. From the Eastern most point we could see faint distortions further to the south east, like heat shimmer without the heat — a wavering of space itself. @ChrisW refused to share the GPX track we had taken; said his instruments were giving false returns. I marked what I could of the edge of the zone, and withdrew. No signs of movement. No sound. Just the quiet weight of the unknown, waiting. Sunday I will bring the rest of the team closer. To map the "un-mappable". Caution will be our only ally.

UPDATE 20251015: A half remembered dream Sleep offered no peace last night. I woke before dawn with the image still burning behind my eyes — a twisting structure half buried in the sand, spiralled like a shell yet split open at its peak, as though drawing something down from the sky. I made a quick sketch before it faded, but even the lines on the page feel incomplete, as if the form resists being remembered. When I compared it to the overlays around Al Khatim Astronomical Observatory, the similarity unsettled me. The dream-structure’s contours echo the twin domes of the facility, but warped, elongated — a reflection seen through heat haze. The coordinates in my dream align too closely with the area east of the observatory, not far from where the face appeared in the dunes. Coincidence would be a comfort, yet the pattern persists. If the observatory once watched the skies, perhaps now the desert itself is watching back. Could the “face” and this spiral be different aspects of the same phenomenon — one carved into sand, the other revealed in sleep? The more I study, the less distinction I can draw between the maps and my own mind. I’ve shared none of this with the team. Until we have physical confirmation, I will file it under Subjective Phenomena — Unverified. Still, a question lingers: Are these dreams mine, or are they messages meant for whoever dares to look too long into Khatim?

ouch! hurts to see that! I'm using a wolfbox camera that has front and rear camera... with 24 hour 'parking monitor' when motion is detected or 'bump' detected it starts recording... but it has no-way to alert me that it has done it. requires a slightly different wiring job so that it goes into standby when main power stops.. but stays able to record in low power park mode. (Easy job DIY, or any accessories shop can install) Might be better options that alert via SMS etc about movement... but when i had a tesla and had that feature it just went off and constantly annoyed me sending alerts to my phone about people walking past the car.... ended up disabling it. not sure if there is a really good option for detecting this kind of damage unless you notice it right away

For me time of day and direction plays the biggest part. As the sun gets higher in sky and sand readability reduces, i'll start getting stuck on obstacles that should have been a no brainer. Drive before 10:00, or after 15:00. Lunch drives are a fools errand! Night driving in a way, is much easier as you always have the shadows from your lights and the sand to show you the terrain exactly as you coming towards it.