Seen some dust before, but came across a situation over long weekend, whilst with a group of other vehicles in which visibility was so bad as to make me wonder if there isn't a better way to move a group?
I don't have any answers so I thought I'd present the problem.
This section of a club trip was thru some normally damp
forrest and
about 25km to our destination, an old disused railway tunnel called Cheviot tunnel that you can have a bit of fun by driving the car thru it.
I wasn't leader at the time and there were about 10 cars following the main dirt road.
I shot off with an 80 series to tackle some tricky tracks and intersected back with the main group 1/2 through.
This drive section which went thru a valley began at dusk and it was fully dark an hour later at the end.
The convoy began quite
well but very quickly dust combined with dusk became the issue.
The UHF worked
well at the start but soon cars began to hold back from the one in front as the dust got worse and convoy length increased.
As
forrest got thicker and night fell and with the completely still air the dust would not settle and headlights began to glare of the dust cloud making it very hard to drive.
I was not with group just then, doing a harder track at the top of the valley and just listening to things deteriorate.
With the convoy now about a kilometer long comms between some vehicles began to break down in the thick
forrest, and messages began to be missed.
However to their credit everyone seemed to follow the convoy rule of waiting for the next car at each turn, and this simple process kept everyone on the right track at least.
The dust got to such a level that in some
places the road ahead could simply not be seen.
It really was the first time I have seen a complete "Whiteout" in summer.
About 3 vehicles found it so bad that they simply had to stop here and there further breaking up the convoy.
Now that may sound like good practise but conditions were really bad and even tailights dissappeared within 50m on the worse sections, and one or two had to pull up in a hurry to avoid hitting a car, and often you could not tell if you were on the right side of the road.
One car in front of us simply could not see a turn which had a clay
embankment the same colour as the dust and went straight ahead into it but only at about 5kmh.
Another decided the only way to proceed forward was to wind the windows down and he and wife called the road edges as they became visible.
He won the most dusty car award !
I intersected with the group 1/2 way thru and waited till all had passed and took up tail end charlie position.
While the dust was worse here I had one advantage in that I had my own tracklog for the GPS here and we could predict ahead just a little and help a couple who were finding it hard going, as even though the "rooftop brand" maps of the area
are good they did not match the road to within the less than 20 meters required.
2 things may have helped a bit - better radio like the VHF ones the landy club uses bit this probably isn't a realistick ask, however an upgraded UHF CB system
with 25 watts and more channels would have.
The second thing that could help was more precise use of the radio system with less chatter.
Any Suggestions
Robin