If you like being out in your 4×4 off-road or on a trip, you often meet like-minded people. That leads to great chats around the campfire and often to new friendships too. In the off-road and travel scene, many communities, clubs and associations, small and large, have formed and they are very active. We think that is brilliant, and so in our Scene & Clubs series we keep introducing interesting clubs and communities from the off-road and travel scene. Today, for a change, a forum, namely the Offroad-Forum.
There are many internet forums around our favourite hobby of off-roading and off-road travel. Among them are numerous brand forums, but also brand-neutral communities. One such brand-neutral forum is the Offroad-Forum run by Andreas Pflug, known to many as Flashman, or Flashi for short. Flashman? The “Flash” in the nickname actually stands for a lightning flash and has nothing at all to do with the Adobe software of the same name. Andreas loves the sciences, meteorology and pyrotechnics too. And those involve flashes.
How did the Offroad-Forum actually come about?
In 2003 Andreas fulfilled a long-held dream and bought his first off-roader, a Jeep Grand Cherokee. With that purchase, as we all know, the questions and ideas really start in earnest. And where did you best swap notes back then? In “Jeep forums”. But what soon bothered him there was an often excessive pride in the vehicle brand. Almost a fetish.
So in 2005, by a few roundabout ways, he started his own forum project. Namely the Offroad-Forum. This forum was to be brand-neutral and guided by the wishes and needs of its users. The crew and the operator would stay more in the background and so support a free exchange without outside influence.
And what has become of it?
To date, almost 100,000 threads have been started here and almost 1.5 million posts written! Among them interesting questions around gear and building up vehicles, exciting travel reports, everyday topics, organising get-togethers, looking for travel partners, exchanges on technical topics and spannering help, all the way to detailed, illustrated build reports of travel vehicles, everyday off-roaders and rally machines, and much more.
Over all the years, a great many forum members have put in a huge amount of work and gathered knowledge, wonderful photos and highly interesting reports here. A great resource for off-roaders, off-road travellers and anyone who wants to become one. Because the Offroad-Forum has that too: advice for newcomers. Through all of it, the fun and the odd friendly bit of banter are not in short supply either! Top stuff!
To keep things clear with so many articles, the forum is split into various sub-forums. So everything has its place, whether buying advice, exchanges on travel topics, different vehicle makes or the wanted/for-sale section. Not to forget the special forums. These are about competitive events with off-road vehicles, such as the Superkarpata Trophy and, of course, the legendary Rallye Breslau, whose representative in Germany Flashi was for a long time, a role he can no longer take on now because of too many projects of his own.
There is also an Offroad Wiki that holds all the terms around off-roading, from A for ABE to Z for auxiliary lights. They have even thought of a few useful tools like a user map or the calculators for tyre sizes and cable cross-sections! And for members it is all free of advertising too.
So who exactly is behind the Offroad-Forum?
Flashi is a jack-of-all-trades. Given the sheer number of his activities around off-roading, a day seems to have more than 24 hours and a week more than 7 days. On his website flashman.tv he says himself that his work and his passions are the best place to start in describing himself. Let us take a look at a selection of his projects beyond the Offroad-Forum.
There is also the Facebook group Offroad in Deutschland, like the Offroad-Forum the largest German-language brand-neutral off-road group on Facebook. Or projects as exciting as they are useful, like PicR.de. PicR.de is a free image-upload service for easily uploading and posting photos and graphics in online forums. The clever bit: the BB code needed for forums is generated ready to use. Simple and fast. And not to forget, of course, the Fettschnecken Racing Team, a rally project that began at the end of 2004 together with a friend and was already off to a strong start in 2005 by taking part in the Berlin-Breslau adventure rally.
A huge, varied off-road community has grown up here
With almost 23,000 registered members, the Offroad-Forum is the largest German-language off-road community. And this community is enormously varied too. Four-wheel-drive cars, panel vans, trucks, 4x4s, SUVs, enduro bikes, it makes no difference. The main thing is the fun of a shared hobby.
Many of the members have known each other in person for a long time, go on shared trips or take part in competitions together. The author himself joined about ten years ago and was warmly received straight away, like all new members. In this way contacts have formed at home and abroad, even overseas, that probably would not exist without this online community. That is how it is for many members of the Offroad-Forum.
Numerous real-life events complement the forum. Over the many years of the Offroad-Forum, something new has been put on again and again. Whether the epic Offroad-Forum meetings, summer festivals or “Schnoh änt Gloh”, the small but fine winter meets, to name just a few.
Dimensions like these can of course no longer be handled by one person, and so the forum’s off-road-loving crew came together.
The OF-SERIES event series
Out of such initially one-off events grew the OF-SERIES event series.
From 2014 to 2016 there was the Offroad Summer Festival. First for two years at the Profen / Hohenmölsen open-cast mine south of Leipzig, then near the F60 in the Niederlausitz. Up to 850 vehicles could let loose there for several days on terrain that would otherwise have been completely off limits. An enormous effort and a great success too.
Sadly that was the end of it afterwards. Re-naturalisation, the sale and sharply increased environmental requirements made a continuation impossible. And so Andreas and his team tinkered with a new idea, a rolling festival. In October 2019 the time had come. 100 teams (that was the registration limit) set off on the first edition of FIVE MOUNTAINS. The route of the first edition of this roving festival led from Slovenia through Croatia, Bosnia and Montenegro to the Adriatic beach in Albania.
What is special about FIVE MOUNTAINS
There is no guided tour with guides here; instead all participants drive the routes themselves. With their own schedule during the day, their own breaks and speed. Equipped with a roadbook, map, GPS and compass, the off-roaders enjoy exciting routes, culture and nature.
The enormous experience from rally organisation feeds into this too. “On the side”, Flashi is also the developer of the GEOTRAQ software, which you can see in use at all kinds of motorsport events in Europe, Africa and Asia. GEOTRAQ is about timing, live tracking, safety management and a registration database.
So at the OF-SERIES events too, alongside fun, great routing and good food, the participants’ safety is taken care of with GPS trackers, rescue, recovery and support vehicles. That means every participant, whether a beginner or an experienced off-roader, can feel in good hands. That is not a given for events of this kind. All in keeping with Flashi’s motto: “Whoever seeks adventure must not fear luxury!”
By the way, the third edition of FIVE MOUNTAINS, with 144 teams, was recently completed successfully. And that despite partly challenging weather. You will find a report from FIVE MOUNTAINS here on Matsch&Piste. The first edition of SIX DUNES, the desert adventure in Morocco in November that follows the FIVE MOUNTAINS concept, was a full success too.
In 2022 many great events await the off-roaders again
In spring, more precisely from 4 to 20 May 2022, it is SIX DUNES once again, Morocco again. Summer, sun and the freedom of the mountains, deserts and endless tracks.
And in autumn it is off to the Balkans again. The FIVE MOUNTAINS 4.0 tour is coming up. And that for the fourth time now. Information on this event, planned for October, is available already at five-mountains.de.
Have we made you curious?
Do you want to be part of this great community? Then take a look at the Offroad-Forum. New forum members are always warmly welcome! Here you go straight to the registration.
© Photos: 4×4-pics.com, Rallymaniacs.com, C. von Arnim, Andreas Pflug
By the way, are you an off-road club, association or community too, do you burn for the passion of off-roading or off-road travel and would you like to appear in our Scene & Clubs section? Then do get in touch! We would love that!