Almost4X4 GPS Challenge - 2023

Ehab
media
media
Posts: 103
Joined: Sun Dec 06, 2020 10:27 pm
Has thanked: 539 times
Been thanked: 532 times

Where to start? The fun? The learning? The team spirit?
The action started few weeks prior the challenge when we as a team decided to practice, we spent a considerable time understanding different GPS formats and which device or application to use. It was worth every minute we spent as this was game changer for us.
The challenge day started with an action early morning for us when one of our team members got stuck on the way to the meeting point, quickly went to rescue him and back to the meeting point.

We got the required documents and off we go, the challenge started. Our strategy was to aim for medium and hard points as much as possible but also approach easy points if they are on our way. The first half of the day was with good pace and we approached a good number of points, tried to approach the camp site for a quick break and karak but then we were notified that we will lose points if we visit the camp, so we decided to continue to the second half and approach harder points. Later the team were a bit exhausted so we took a call to have a quick break and off we go to a magnificent pace approaching very nice and sharp crests. Very few second tries and stucks where we were quickly recovered and back with our track.
In the middle of 2 hard points, i heard some interferences from the radio, went to a higher point to get better signal, it was another team who has an issue and they need help. Without hesitation, we went and helped until the car was recovered. It was 30 minutes till the challenge time is over, so decided to go straight line with higher pace but safe.

Could not resist to go through 2 points on our way but we did it really quick, stamp, log the time, picture and sms really quick.
We reached the meeting point 2 minutes late with huge smile on our faces, the learning was magnificent, approaching untouched dunes in the right angle with minimum load on the car, inspecting the crest before doing the switch, facing different terrain and be the first to experience it and inform others to watch out, all of that was amazing and for me i learned a lot. I wish the competition is longer or maybe over 2 days like a professional rally, it was a magnificent event.

Few people told us why you helped another team? They are competing with you? You lost a very valuable time; could be, but that what Almost4x4 is all about, its not about winning, its not about being famous or for others to complement you, its about the family and learning.
We lost a lot of points because we were late and maybe if we did not help our competitors we could have crossed multiple extra points and scored higher, but no, i am not sorry for what me and my team did and i will do it again and again and again with no hesitation at all.

No video this time, i had the camera mounted and the remote next to the handle bar, but did not want to lose focus for even a fraction of second, so did not record anythingšŸ˜ŠšŸ˜Š
Next time inshalla will have a direct power to the camera and record the whole trip šŸ¤£šŸ¤£šŸ¤£

See you soon.
User avatar
nidal78
media
media
Posts: 47
Joined: Sat Mar 02, 2019 12:02 pm
Location: Sharjah
Has thanked: 530 times
Been thanked: 197 times
Contact:

Hi Almosters
Since @Solmaz posted this event in the app I was counting the days for the promised day and that day didnā€™t disappointed me at all it was maybe the best day so far in my journey with ALMOST4X4 and all the credits goes to @Solmaz all the marshals and specially to my team mates (The Smashers) @Ehab & @ImranFJ šŸ™

Before the event day I was the last one to reach the campaign point around 1:30am everyone were already went to bed ( I feel sorry I missed the chitchat around the šŸ”„) the experience of driving in the dark alone was amazing it gave me a high dose of adrenaline so thatā€™s why I couldnā€™t sleep before 3amšŸ˜…
I woke up at 6:30am had my breakfast and joined everyone at the meeting point, but before the briefing Ehab received a call from Imran that he got an issue on the way to the meeting point so we reported that to the Marshals and Ehab went for help and I stayed to attend the briefing
A master class briefing was given by @Solmaz and @alshamsi_m explained every single detail to the challengers, luckily my team mates arrived by the end of the briefing so I took some time to explain for them the most important points and rules, then we started to upload the coordinates that were given to us in a different format, and before the deadline to leave the meeting point at 8:30(maybe we were the last team) we finished and off we went
Our strategy was to target the medium level point then increase the level to higher ones, Ehab our leader (For most of the time because he has more experience as an intermediate) chosen a very nice route very fun but of course in a safe way thanks Ehab you really did a great job šŸ‘šŸ»
The most difficult and interesting points was the one on the tree (we knew at the end of the competition it was @Rashidjass idea šŸ˜ˆ) where I was the one who found it and pay the price of it when I felt down while I am collecting it and got a few scratches on my hand but nothing serious ( thank you Rashidjass šŸ˜…) and we were the first ones to reach there and found our first treasure āœŒšŸ»
The second remarkable point was almost on the top of high dune ( it was purple one) and we had to come fast and climb to reach it and we stopped in a very sloppy angle where we struggled even to get out from our cars to collect the point šŸ„µ
Of course we had a few stuks and second try but with the experience and the team spirit we were able to continue the challenge
As mentioned before in previous reports by the last hour in the challenge we heard on the rescue frequency that PDS team asking for help so we responded and went for help, although we lost some time helping our friends and that cost us -50 points for 2 minutes late reaching the camp site but of course this is something we will do it every time if someone needs help from our friends because this is what we learned from our beloved club NO ONE LEFT BEHIND
Closing my trip report with a very big thank to our founder and marshals for organizing this amazing event really we are so lucky to have you as our second family šŸ˜‡
Big thanks as well for all my friends who participated in this amazing event and congratulations to the winners and hard luck to
The ones who couldnā€™t make it but for sure you are all winners guys āœŒšŸ»
Finally to my mates The Smashers Ehab and Imran it was really an honor to be part of such an incredible team really enjoyed it because of you guys thank you very much šŸ™
See you soon on the sand
User avatar
Sorin
media
media
Posts: 107
Joined: Sat Jul 27, 2019 8:09 pm
Location: Dubai
Has thanked: 291 times
Been thanked: 310 times

Greetings everyone,

Firstly, I have to express my great appreciation for the Marshalls of the club who planned & executed the First Edition of the Almost4x4 GPS Challenge 2023 flawlessly and by doing so, giving us members a great experience to remember for years to come.

The size of the ā€œplaygroundā€ was perfect, not too small that we would run into each other but not too big that we wouldnā€™t make all the points on time. The placement of the flags was great as well, the ones next to the bushes were the most detested for me because they canā€™t be seen unless you drive on that exact side of the bush as the flag, twice I drove past two points centimeters away and missed them but my teammates on the opposite side saw them. The flags placed on steep slopes were my favorite because no matter how many teams visited them, the sand would cascade down and cover their tracks and this giving hope to the next team that they will get there first and claim the treasure. Lastly the time allocated for the challenge was again just right, any less and people would go into race mode which is not advisable and any longer and members might start making fatigue related mistakes.

The Turtles were having a great time going from point to point, making use of the large sabkhas to cover more terrain faster and under the lead of our Chief Turtle @David we had a pretty good run & enjoyed the beautiful lines he carved as well. Funny enough we struggled a bit finding the first point because we introduced the wrong gps format and again we struggled to find the ā€œtree pointā€ because we didnā€™t think to look up right away. All the points in between including the purple ones were fairly easy to locate (this is not a brag Marshalls :D )

Unfortunately near the end of the challenge one of the Turtles became incapacitated so we had to call it a day and head back home without glory.

As mentioned above the family spirit & camaraderie were felt all throughout the day and I wouldnā€™t have expected it to be any different.

Congratulations to the top teams and once again congratulations and thank you to the organizers for a successful event that will hopefully become a tradition in the club.

Image

I approve this message ā¬†ļø
User avatar
Preggy
Intermediate
Intermediate
Posts: 14
Joined: Sat Oct 20, 2018 11:46 pm
Been thanked: 19 times

Team Luckey Dauntless Demons
During the pre-challenge briefing, @Solmaz mentioned that the first team to arrive at any waypoint would collect a squishy toy, and that became the main motivation for my team mates. All they wanted was to arrive at a waypoint before any other team so that they could each have a squishy toy. With this in mind, we set off to tackle the south west quadrant of the map, since all the other teams seemed to be heading off in a northerly direction, and we figured that it would give us a better chance at collecting some toys in an area that we got to first. Our gamble paid off and we soon scooped up our first squishy.

Shortly afterwards , with some trepidation, we approached our first purple waypoint. We knew that the treasures at these elusive points would be difficult to find so we deployed a strategy that would reduce the time taken to claim our prize. After searching every nook and cranny within a 100 m radius from the waypoint and coming up empty handed, we started to get anxious about the 20 or so minutes we spent searching in vain. Rathica even got out of her car and started to search on foot while Luckey and I did one more sweep of the periphery. I was driving very slowly to make certain that I didnā€™t miss anything when I got crested and was unable to self recover. Fortunately, Luckey was nearby and got me out of the sticky situation with a gentle pull. Thereafter, we hurried back to Rathica who had already wandered some distance from her parked car by this time. After regrouping we decided to check the coordinates of the waypoint on our GPS devices against the hard copy that we were given at the start of the challenge. Lo and behold, we had entered a wrong digit in the latitude and were searching in an area about 1.5 km from the actual waypoint. We put pedal to the metal and made our way to the correct point, found the flag, but alas, someone had gotten there before us.

Given that we had lost the better part of 35 minutes in search of a single point, it was unlikely that we would recover that time without endangering ourselves, so we decided to make the best of a bad situation. When the terrain looked safe, we took turns leading the convoy, took turns collecting toys, and generally had an amazing drive.

We hit every waypoint that we planned to, except the one that Rashid hid in the tree. We did find the tree. It had more tire tracks around it than the slopes of Super Bowl on a Saturday afternoon. This indicated that the flag was either in the tree or somewhere at the base, but we didnt expect the flag to be so well hidden in the thorny foliage of the tree. Now, Iā€™m not sure if it was a hint of dehydration kicking in, or our lesson from the previous purple waypoint that consumed an extraordinarily long time to find, whatever the case may have been, team LDD wasnā€™t too keen on spending any more time here than we needed to. So we posed for a photo under the tree to prove that we were there, and headed off into a rather technical area.

As the sun started to get low in the sky and we were nearing the challenge cut off time, we headed to the finish line with just 7 minutes to spare.
Our efforts got us a handful of squishy toys, a load of experience and good memories that will last a lifetime.

Thanks for a creatively orchestrated challenge Solmaz, I can only imagine the endless hours you must have spent pouring over the map of the challenge area. Luckey and Rathica, I couldnā€™t have asked for better team mates. You guys rock.
Ride or DiešŸš™
User avatar
Solmaz
Marshal
Marshal
Posts: 82
Joined: Mon Nov 04, 2013 8:44 pm
Location: Dubai
Has thanked: 157 times
Been thanked: 115 times
Contact:

Hi all,

Most of you already knew that I love challenges, I talk about them a lot. This started years ago with our very own egg basket game back when I was a newbie. Over the years, I (and a few other rascals you know and love) have tried other challenges available in the off-road community. In some of these games you need to follow a sequence of GPS coordinates, some you need to reach at a point by doing the least amount of kilometres possible and there are treasure hunt games, similar to what we did last week.

Since my upgrade to marshal, this challenge has been my dream project. I really really wanted to share what I loved about the challenges with my Almost family. I tried to build a game that leaves enough space for planning and strategy, where you can test and use everything you learned, without complex control mechanisms that would take days to analyse and resolve.

Unlike most of you, my "GPS Challenge" adventure started a few months back. After finally fixing the date at a marshals meeting, I started to work on the rules, limitations, risk assessments, point and print materials. Once the trip was posted in January there was no turning back.

One scouting trip, many Amazon boxes and a lot of design hours later, it was time to set up the points. @Agalon and I took the map's middle to northeast section; @Rashidjass and @Scorpio had the West and @alshamsi_m had the southeast section. After that, the week passed quickly with final preparations and anticipation of the weekend.

Finally, the day arrived and I reached the camp around 7 pm. I was met with a flock of white FJs (plus one lonely Jeep) and perfectly cooked lamb chops. Soon more people joined us and we enjoyed the evening as usual. There was a lot of excitement and some strategy talk which I loved listening to but couldn't comment much.

The next morning the challenge kicked off on time. After the briefing, teams had their final meetings and started to leave one by one. A couple of teams were almost literally kicked off, but in the end, it was just the marshals who were left at the camp. We moved our operation HQ to a point with a nice view of the landscape (and point 36 - placed by me) and started to track the teamsā€™ progresses. The SMS system worked well and it helped us a lot - especially when two teams faced serious problems. But even though it was initially set up as a precaution for possible communication issues, it also gave us a lot of feedback on how teams moved, what their strategies were and honestly it was quite fun to track you guys. Special thanks to @rapailo for his craftsmanship with the map.

Unfortunately, in the end, we had 3 teams disqualified with one serious incident. I had to stay back at the HQ until the end of the game but I knew everyone was in good hands in the company of their more-than-capable teammates and our marshals who ran for help immediately.

I would like to congratulate all the participants again for their amazing performance (which exceeded our already high expectations) and the team spirit you have shown over and over again. I know it sounds lame, but for me, you are all winners.

Finally, I read all of the reports above with a huge smile on my face and I feel like I succeeded in my mission. In addition to the obvious GPS knowledge, now you all have a better understanding of the planning process of our drives, why we choose specific times during the day, and how the sun and wind direction affect it.

One last special thanks to our marshals and founder for their trust in me and their continuous support. This event wouldn't be possible without them. And a big respect to our crew, even left in the dark (they got all the strategic information at the same time with all the members) they did their best to support the event.

It was a great day indeed.

Solmaz
User avatar
Jasper
Intermediate
Intermediate
Posts: 52
Joined: Fri Jun 02, 2017 3:02 pm
Has thanked: 112 times
Been thanked: 83 times

Hello everyone!

I canā€™t still believe I was able to join this amazing event. When the trip was posted I wanted to join but due other commitments I donā€™t want to put my name and remove it last minute. But the stars aligned and even on the day of the drive I was adopted by the Sons of Ditches team! I buddied with @presa on the way to the camp the night before and we arrived around 9pm and went to pitch my tent around 12midnight. On the next day you can feel a lot of excitement while the briefing is being carried out by @Solmaz and @alshamsi_m.

Our teamā€™s strategy is input the points only when we are targeting to go to that point. We didnā€™t put all the points all at once in the first 30mins. I think we were the first or second group to leave the camp. Our lead was @Lenny and @Martin in the middle and I was to sweep and do the recovery tasks. Lenny did great finding the points in a fun and safe manner. Since we were the first few teamā€™s to leave the camp, we were able to get 4 squishy toys out of the first 6 points we targeted. The first point was a purple one and when we found it on the top of the dune it was game on! Sometimes I feel that lenny was just challenging the dunes instead of going for the GPS challenge haha!

We did have few breaks in between and weā€™ve met 4 teams along the way. All the teams were in the zone and you can see all were having a great time. At around 3pm we again decided which area to target before hitting for camp. We agreed to target 2 more points and we set off. Unfortunately Martinā€™s front axle broke while trying to self recover. The sand is too soft and it just grabbed the wheels. Lesson learned but this caused us to arrive in the camp 440PM. This incident happened around 6 kms to camp. We had no choice but for Martin to drive on 4x2 but he did great. End result was we got disqualified. All is good and we felt accomplished still and we could have gotten at least 3rd place. Still happy everyone is safe after the challenge.

Overall it was an amazing day. For sure we have learned so much ā€“ navigating, time management, safety, recovery and a lot more. Kudos to @Solmaz. It was really amazing and to our Founder and Marshals and Crew that put their hearts for this amazing dayā€¦ thank you once again!

Jasper
User avatar
alshamsi_m
Founder
Founder
Posts: 837
Joined: Fri Aug 10, 2007 8:29 am
Location: Al Hamriyah
Has thanked: 930 times
Been thanked: 960 times
Contact:

Hello everyone

I am sure that I wrote my trip report but for some reason, I can't find it. I think I lost my post coordinates :you_re_kidding_right:

2023 is promising with amazing times, it is just March and we had this amazing event. We had a lot of preparation done by the marshals to make this event as safe as possible.

All of you are winners by just joining us and overcome the fear of driving alone.

Keep up the good, we still have more to come and the year is still young.

Till next time, stay safe and see you soon.

Cheers
Shamsi
AdventurousĀ League ofĀ Mountains,Ā Oceans andĀ SandĀ Thrills
User avatar
osman
Intermediate
Intermediate
Posts: 121
Joined: Wed Feb 17, 2016 6:22 pm
Location: Dubai Marina
Has thanked: 139 times
Been thanked: 239 times

First things first, I like to thank to:

@Solmaz for thinking, planning, organizing and executing such a complex, fun, self teaching, unforgettable and flawless event. The rules and scoring points were well thought; meaning it is not simply driving from a point to another, but creating a big fun while doing it. Every detail, especially safety and communications, were already thought of and explained to the participants. This event was not "eggs in the basket with steroids", but whole lotta different game!

Another huge appreciation go to @Solmaz, @Agalon, @Rashidjass, @Scorpio, @alshamsi_m for spending the previous weekend to place the GPS markers on the field.

Then on the day, the operation headquarter was setup to monitor, communicate and intervene if necessary. @Solmaz, @rapailo, @Agalon, @Rashidjass, @Scorpio, @SINGH, @presa, @alshamsi_m made everyone felt that they are always in safe hands and help is just a call or message away.

Also big thanks to the crew team for preparing the necessary logistics.

Now all about the personal stuff:

Solmaz casually mentioned while ago that she was thinking about a nice GPS game. Then I hoped it would not be the weekend I would be travelling since I bought the ticket before the trip was posted. Luckily, my travel was the next day after the event. On the registration day, I joined @galindakis under Team 2. Later @Enrique completed the trio. We were so creative(?) that we come-up with the team name as "The Team" just only a week before the event!

I was the first one to arrive the camp site, just catching a glimpse of the sunset. After the well missed chats around the fire (needless to mention @rapailo's funny stories as always), bed time was a bit earlier than usual for everyone as people wanted to be well rested before the event. I left my tent for the next night's sleep but seemed like no-one wanted to sleep another night so I had to pack after the event.

After the detailed briefing, we were the last ones to leave the HQ since we talked about the path after we entered all of the coordinates. If I did the same thing again, I would decide the path first then enter only the first few points and run for the toys. On the positive side, we checked before we moved where the majority had gone so we went the opposite direction. It looked a good plan at the beginning but once we approached the first points we saw some tracks and the empty pockets showing that our order is similar to another team left earlier. We had a quick review of the path and decided to stick to the original plan, just reaching the points and try our luck for the toys, which we ended-up collecting only one!! One point worth mentioning is that the difficulty levels of the points can be different than their colors if you approach them from different location, path or the map order.

As the time well passed midday, we had a short break to eat and drink. About this time, we had to take the rope out a bit more often and the stucks were getting a bit more tricky. The sun was making the dune shape more deceiving and harder to judge at speed. We then re-evaluated the situation, waypoint orders, point values, etc., and decided to pick-up points as we get close to the HQ, then re-evaluate & plan the next targets as we go. Our last target was the famous purple flag and we had plenty of time....

We went every possible direction more than 100m radius but we were clueless. Knowing myself, I cannot locate a cup, a box, a fruit or something like that in our fridge after looking everywhere, the fridge starts to beep very loudly and then my wife comes and just grabs it in a second. I must say that I was pretty much disappointed(wink wink!) with my team for their performance. After some time after searching, I seriously thought this was a trick by the marshals, there was no such flag, the point was marked close to the HQ so that they just want to make fun of us and test how we behave.

At the end, that was a great day of driving, experience, joy, team work and friendship. Thanks to all participants and congratulations to the winners.
Warning: Sand is addictive... and also the sea salt.
Post Reply