Lou Schneider

She certainly looked official. I believe the in-person visit was because this park (Pair-A-Dice) doesn't use the lot number as the mailbox number so short of a personal visit there's no way to match up mailed notices with the physical lots. I went through the same thing when I registered my vehicles at the DMV, after I said it was the SKP park they knew what I was talking about. So all my vehicle registrations have separate mailing and physical addresses, differing only in the box or space number. The census taker was satisfied when I said I had already mailed in the initial form. And she stood 6 ft. back from my RV door the whole time.

I also got a reminder about a week after I mailed in the original form. In between a Census taker appeared at my door to collect the information in person. Her only question was how many people lived here. One problem may be that the mailbox numbers in the Pahrump park don't correspond to the physical lot numbers, something I noted when I returned the original form. So the reminders are either automated or I've been double counted.

A few years ago Dilbert creator Scott Adams held an on-line contest to design the perfect Dilbert House. One of the online suggestions was to install two dishwashers. Dirty dishes go in one, the other contains clean dishes. As you use them, you draw from the clean dishwasher and then put them in the dirty dishwasher until all of the contents are transfered over. Then the dirty dishwasher is run, and it becomes the clean dishwasher and dirty dishes are placed in the other one. Repeat as needed without having to wash or put away the dishes. If I ever design a RV, I''m adopting this and making room for two of the Fisher Paykel drawer dishwashers.

The 2" straight extensions on the page TexasPSDX linked to look like they have a center pin that opens the valve on the stock valve stem when you press on the end of the extension. This eliminates any chance of a leak as the extension is only pressurized when you're actually using it. I couldn't tell from the pictures if the 6" extension works the same way.

If you don't have a Costco or Sam's Club membership, Batteries Plus has pretty good prices on Duracell (East Penn) 6 volt golf cart batteries. You get 10% off if you order online and pick up at a local store.

Not necessary ... what gets lost during battery operation is H2O as the current flowing between the battery plates disassociates water into it's component Hydrogen and Oxygen atoms. Specific gravity is determined by tne amount of lead sulfate dissolved into the electrolyte as the battery gains a charge, so there's a good chance adding acid will actually lower the specific gravity of the cell as the dissolved lead sulfate gets diluted.

What happens when the auto pilot disconnects? Does the car come to a stop or just continue down the road unguided? Neither sounds very safe in freeway traffic.

If you have income from a YouTube channel, use the RV to produce the content and have the website or a logo displayed on the RV does this meet the commercial use threshold? <g>

Welcome to the Escapees Rv Forum! Like others have said, you'll likely have problems trying to live fulltime in an RV in your area, especially during the winter. RVs are meant to travel, and when the weather turns cold most RV parks in snow areas close until spring as most people either put their RVs in storage for the winter or head towards areas with warmer weather. All of the compromises between livability and ease of movement in an RV are towards movability. Things like thickness of insulation, quality of construction, space, etc. You'll be better off looking for a manufactured home (mobile home) in an established park. It will cost more than $6000 but will be a much better fit for your needs.

I'd take 395 south to Kramer Junction, then CA 58 east and join I-15 in Barstow. A bit further but Google Maps says it's only 10 minutes longer than continuing down 395 since it's freeway the whole way.

So it sounds like an easy solution to tank smells is to introduce enough air into the tank to keep the contents from going anaerobic? Maybe add a second tank vent stack with a small exhaust fan to draw fresh air into the tank through the existing vent stack. Drawing in air by creating a partial vacuum will keep odors out of the RV instead of pressurizing the tank by blowing air into it.

Be aware the Camco version of that valve has a flexible coupling between the flange that connects to the RV and the valve body so the valve assembly and output connector are free to rotate. Could be a problem if it rotates the wrong way and allows the valve handle to contact some debris as you're driving down the roaf. A bit of PVC glue will lock the valve assembly in place after you determine the correct position for your rig.

Travel trailers aren't as popular as 5th wheels, but that just means due to the lower demand there are some good deals to be found. Five years ago I bought a 2001 Sunnybrook 27FKS travel trailer that had been used as a destination trailer by a retired couple - it was set up in a park and they used it on a seasonal basis. There was some minor fading on the outside decals but inside it looked like new. I moved it to an RV park in Los Angeles where I was living while I was working fulltime, then when I retired three years ago I moved it to my lot in the Pahrump SKP co-op. Shortly after retiring I found a nice 1999 Ford F350 single rear wheel crew cab shortbed pickup with the 7.3 L Powerstroke ... the good engine. Because it has the short bed and single rear wheels it's not suitable for towing a 5th wheel, but it tows the Sunnybrook just fine. It should - it's tow rating is over twice as much as the Sunnybrook's 6400 lb dry weight. Again, I got a good deal because it wasn't 4WD and not a lot of people wanted an F350 shortbed single rear wheel truck. Between the roof height camper shell on the truck and the relatively low height of the Sunnybrook (9' + the roof A/C), the pair make a fairly aerodynamic combination. With the diesel Powerstroke engine I average 10-12 MPG towing, 18-20 MPG solo. So what did this combo cost? An insurance payout after a driver ran a stop sign and totalled my 1994 Ford turbodiesel pickup covered the $8000 cost of the truck. This was double what I paid for the 1994 truck 5 years earlier. I bought the trailer for $6500 from a Las Vegas consignment lot, and since I didn't have the pickup yet I installed a brake controller in my 21 ft. Class A and used it to tow the trailer to the RV park in Los Angeles. It looked ridiculous going down the freeway but worked fine. So less than $15k for the combo. I found both of these on Craigslist. The only disadvantage to the truck and trailer is I can't tow my Ford Bronco II behind them. So I kept my small Class A for trips when I want to bring the Bronco. Other than that, all of my travels have been with the truck and trailer and they work very well.

Water is also an effective lubricant. After emptying the tanks I pour about a quart of water down a drain and through the toilet, enough to fill the tank outlet and keep the valve wet. This keeps any residue on the valve soft and pliable. If you let the residue dry out, it hardens and can damage the seals when you open and close the valve.

If you're buying propane in the desert, you may be getting a high butane mixture. This happened a few years ago in Quartzsite when one supplier got a deal on "propane" from Mexico that was largely butane. A lot of his customers ran out of gas when the temperatures dipped lower than expected. You seldom get pure propane, most of what you buy is a mixture of propane and butane designed to vaporize at or below the lowest expected temperature in that area. If there's too much butane in the mix (or in your tank) it can stop vaporizing at low temperatures, leaving you without gas until the tank warms up. The same thing can happen if you fill your tank in the warm low-lands and then move to the colder mountains. Pure propane vaporizes down to -44F while butane stops vaporizing at 31 degrees F.

I once paid $4000 for two nights boondocking at Camping World. Of course, this included installing a set of HWH leveling jacks (which later had to be re-done at the factory after two hydraulic hoses melted from being routed too close to the exhaust pipe).

I was in Quartzsite during Big Tent Week, camped south of town in the La Posa Wash LTVA. Speedtest showed my download speeds were in the range of 600 kbps while uploads were 5-6 Mbps. This suggests the problem wasn't RF congestion but the tower dividing the available download bandwidth among too many users. The week after the Big Tent download speeds improved to 2-3 Mbps, also suggesting the slowdown the week before was due to too many users sharing the download bandwidth. I was using a Mobley on AT&T and got there in the middle of the Big Tent week. Another Mobley user in the group reported much better speeds, but she had been continuously connected since the week before the Big Tent.

Most things function much nicer with a bit of lube. 😁

There was a push towards UHF only antennas at the start of digital broadcasting, as almost all digital stations were located in that band. That's what the Wingman does, enhances the UHF performance of the original batwing. However, the FCC had been steadily shrinking the UHF TV spectrum to make room for new cellular data and other services (the highest RF channel in the US is now channel 37, not 83), re-packing TV stations closer and closer together in the remaining spectrum. A substantial number of digital TV stations are electing to return to the VHF bands (RF channels 2-13), meaning you'll need a VHF antenna or an all channel VHF-UHF antenna to receive them.

There's no such thing as an analog or digital antenna. An antenna is an antenna, it picks up any type of RF from the air and sends it to the receiver. It's the receiver that decodes the analog or digital signal.

2500 miles sounds like the one way distance from Florida to Southern California. Will you be leaving the RV there or returning to Florida, which will double the mileage and fuel costs?

Any loaded engine will be most efficient at it's peak torque RPM. If you have to run it faster than that to make enough power it's wasting fuel. The only exception is a lightly loaded gas engine because of the throttle valve restriction on the air intake. In this case, running it slower than the peak torque speed when the throttle is mostly closed may deliver better mileage because the engine isn't sucking as hard (and wasting power) to get air past the throttle plate. But on a diesel engine or on a heavily loaded gas engine, the most efficient operating speed will be around the torque peak.

Before I retired I installed several Pepwave cellular routers at mountaintop transmitter sites to provide Internet service and they proved to be bulletproof. At most sites I just used their internal diversity antennas inside the building but at one site I had to add a pair of external directional antennas aimed at a cell tower 80 miles away. These sites all had large amounts of background RF noise from multiple high power FM and TV transmitters that often made cellular phones and other hotspots deaf and useless.

Thank you Linda. You're right ... the two LTVAs along I-8 (Pilot Knob near Algodones and Hot Spring near Holtville) only offer trash dumpsters, no water or dump stations. But Holtville has a soaking pool fed by the hot spring and the last time I was at Pilot Knob the gas station at the LTVA entrance had a dump station, well water from a spigot and a RO filtered water dispenser.

When I was in college the local air force base donated a pallet full of surplus oil filled 400 volt capacitors to the electronics lab. The instructor decided it would be a good object lesson to put them all in parallel, charge them up and then drop a wrench across the buss bars to demonstrate the dangers of a charged capacitor. The wrench vaporized with a bang so loud the bomb squad was called out. When his hearing and vision returned, he discovered he had misplaced the decimal point a few places when calculating the total capacitance on the pallet ... it was 4 farads, not 400 microfarads.