Horse With No Name
Hello Sweihan my old friend…
Meeting time 7am and our 11 DFer’s were all on time and ready to go. Everyone was set, deflated, and ready to brief within 5 minutes of the meeting time; impressive. We began the safety briefing, discussed the trip plan, route, and challenges we expected to face for the day. With the frequency assigned, the convoy order set, and support drivers ready, we lined up, performed radio checks and began the trip at 7:15am
We entered the Sweihan Desert and gently side sloped our way along the dunes for about 20 minutes to get everyone warmed up. We stopped briefly and to ensure that everyone was ready to begin to increase the height and pace of the trip; everyone was ready. We crossed the ketch towards Negrah and began to ride the side slopes of the long sweeping dunes. As we progressed, we took to higher side slopes when the option presented itself. The drivers were doing excellent with very few fighting the gravity. As we approached Negrah we had soft sand and a series of long down slopes. At this point we experienced a couple of second tries and a couple of stucks. We played in the vicinity of Negrah for a bit and then eventually took our break at the base to watch some early morning dune climbers.
The ride back to the exit point took about 90 minutes and we side sloped and straight crested our way back through some soft sand and sharp crests. We had a few second tries and a stuck, but that is part of the fun and learning. Everyone did a great job. Thanks Chef Marc, Preggy, and Salah for making the convoy flow effortlessly and for the support.
18 comments on Horse With No Name
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Thanks Mike, Salah and Preggy! One of the best Jr drives I’ve been on, I really proud to see the progress every one is making. Keep it up Fellas.
Thanks Chef, your support means a lot!
Sweihan is an amazing area, it will unleash the power of your car because of its long slopes and high dunes.
It was the first time to drive there for the most of us, however, everybody did well.
We deflated the tires as usual and everything was Ok with a couple of second tries in the first part of the drive.
Second part, the weather start to heat up, the second tries increased and everybody start to struggle in the soft sand. At the inflation point, we discovered that the tires pressure increased about 4psi because of sand heat, and that’s was the reason for struggling.
At the end, everybody was happy and satisfied.
Thanks Mike for taking us there, Preggy, Salah & Chef Marc for the support, and the rest of the convoy, and see you the next drive.
Sweihan is a bit different, but you’ll see that as the Temps get higher your pressures will rise even more.
Thanks for joining us today. Great job.
Thank you so much Mike for taking us to Sweihan. Its not an easy task to take Junior’s to so called “training groind for Liwa” and bringing back safely. Firstly kudos to taking that step 👍.
I loved the way you handled the whole trip from briefing till exit. All of us didn’t realise that you’re upping the ante. It was so nice of you to come personally to all drivers and making sure everyone’s doing good and ready for next stage of drive. It really gave me more confidence and comfortable. Learned a lot today and for sure will thrive more to learn techniques from DF.
@Chefmarc, You were very supportive and I did notice that you were keenly following the convoy from top of crests to make sure all is well. During any tricky situations you were reaching swiftly. Loving driving with you mate 🤙.
@preggy, Amazing second lead, excellent communication and warning us on ditches and bumps.
Thanks again and looking forward for the next trip.
Thank you so much for the feedback.
The whole goal of Desert Fellas is to teach you about the capabilities of your vehicle and you. When you are comfortable and confident you have more fun and are safer in the sand.
Great job out there today. Looking forward to seeing you on more trips.
I left Dubai with WAZE indicating that my arrival time at inflation point would be 6:25 and I was really proud of myself ‘cos I was confident that I could shave off 5 minutes along the route and arrive at 6:20 (that would be a record). To my horror, the route to Sweihan was riddled with fog, which meant slowing down significantly below the speed limit. It was so dense in places that visibility was barely 10 meters at most. So you can imagine my surprise when I arrived at deflation point at 6:42 and found that Marc and 3 other Juniors were already deflating.
Mike got the drive got off to a timely start with me in second lead and Salouh sweeping.
The start of the drive was an unusual experience for many of the Juniors who were experiencing the sands of Sweihan for the first time. What made driving tougher is that this batch of juniors started off-road driving with Fellas in the winter, when the sand was firm and easier to traverse even with slightly high tire pressures . The sand in Sweihan has started to soften up – not as soft and powdery as midsummer but softer than our Juniors had experienced on earlier drives.
Those that heeded the advice that was offered managed the soft sand flawlessly, those who didn’t- well there’s always next week.
Towards the end of the drive Mike embarked on a series of straight crests which had long steep ascends and tricky descends. The convoy put all of their previous training to use and tackled these obstacles with superb control.
On future drives make note of checking tire pressures during the breaks. It is not uncommon for tire pressure to increase a few psi due to the hot sand.
Thanks Mike for pacing the drive so well. It had just the right blend of challenge and ease to test technique and build confidence.
Great job on the recoveries and second tries Salouh.
Thanks for your awesome second lead and kind words Brutha!!
Amazing trip, I’ve learned so much.
My first trip with CopperCon and I loved it for the following reasons:
– great warmup, the difficulty gradually grew so by the time we got to the harder “stuff” we were already confident and awake.
– good that we did a few breaks to breakdown what we’ve done and ask for advices, (pretty has been a massive rockstar and has helped me a lot). This allowed us to debrief the things we weren’t sure about and we had the time to talk about it before the next challenges. It also gave us the time to bond a bit more.
Wonderful trip overall, I feel way more confident and ready for the next one.
Thanks for attending Brutha. Glad you enjoyed. See you again soon.
Was awesome to experience Sweihan, baby Liwa is an apt name! Enjoyed the trip from start to finished, thanks Mike, Salou, Preggy and Marc!
With the foggy start it was great to see everyone there early, well done all, looking forward to more Sweihan trips!
Glad you enjoyed Brutha!!
See you next Friday 🤠
This was my first time in Sweihan, and it was amazing.
Really enjoyed this ride and I have gained some valuable experience.
The soft sand proved to be tricky, especially for me but it was a challenge that I managed to overcome.
The ‘in the moment’ feedback and advice given during this trip was great – I liked that fact that during the stops we would get feedback that we could implement straight away.
Shout out to Preggy and Salah for the support and to Mike for an amazing trip.
Thanks for the feedback. These trips are all about you and anything we can do to raise your confidence and skills are a huge plus!
Thanks Mike and the team for an amazing Sweihan experience. It was a smooth drive with few second tries and stucks and one off-road upgrade (Congrats Mike, well deserved).
See u next week DFs
Thanks Brutha! Looking forward to seeing you again!
Thank you Mike for a wonderful trip at a beautiful area. Thank you Chef and Preggy for the support. I saw great improvement in our Juniors today, keep it up guys