When we lived in Arabia we made two nine day trips into the Empty Quarter each year. We would typically have from three to eight Defenders for a 1000- 1200 kilometer trip offroad.
Each Defender carried two boxes of firewood on their roof rack as each truck was responsible for two nights of campfires. We had two spare tires, and thirteen jerry cans. Eight jerry cans were on top on the roof rack and five jerry cans were inside in a specially constructed box. We bolted our roof racks into the rain gutters so there was no chance for them to move. We also had vertical supports for the roof rack from the windshield clamps and from the back of the truck. We also had permanent ladders up the back.
We calculated our fuel consuption in the following manner. We measured our distance on the geological survey map, and then increased the measurement by thirty percent because we had to do a lot of tacking in the sand dunes. It was rare that we could travel in a straight line. We then took the total calculated distance and divided by 3.5 because we knew that we would get an average of 3.5 kilometers per liter of fuel with heavily laden vehicles in soft sand. With a load of 430 liters of fuel, we could get 1200 kilometers offroad and probably have one jerry can of fuel in reserve when we came out of the desert.
My definition of being lost in the desert didn't have anything to do with location. It meant only one thing. We didn't have enough fuel to make it out. Thankfully, that never happened.
Desert navigation was rather simple in Arabia. We basically navigated into a box. We carried enough fuel to get across the box to a known exit, or we had multiple exits along the way that we could take simply by turning to the right or left and heading in a straight line. It really didn't matter where you were because you knew that if you kept heading in a straight line, you would eventually emerge from the desert on to a highway that marked an edge of the navigational box. We used a different navigational technique when there were bedouin tracks that we could drive in. We would simply follow a track that headed in a direction that we wanted to explore, and when it was time to exit a quadrangle, we simply followed progressively larger tracks that would lead us out. The only time we cared where we were was if we were going to do a rendezvous with another group, or if a vehicle had to be left in the desert, and we needed to return to make repairs.
We had three different Defenders in Arabia, and we spent an average of sixty to ninety nights per year camping in the desert. We took lots of pictures, but unfortunately, they are all in storage in Kentucky. When we finally move our household goods to Phoenix, I will have my maps, photos, trip logs, and other stuff to share. Until then, I have a small collection of photos on positivegraphics.com on panels #3 and #4.
Once I get my stuff from Kentucky, I can post some of our trips.
