Lou Schneider

Social Knowledge's server provider was doing scheduled maintenance yesterday. RVForum.net was also down for a short period.

And yet we both volunteer at the Escapades .... 😉

Sounds to me like this is an excellent way to let the panels get airborne. Think about carrying a piece of plywood in the same manner. You'll get a lot more air (thus potential lift) under something 13" above the roof than something mounted an inch or so above it.

Pretty good, but I think Technomadia's RV Mobile Internet Resource Center is the ultimate textbook. Besides being a source for state of the art information, they do a great job of bringing newcomers up to speed.

There's a third differential between the axles so they can go over bumps and dips independently without sending driveline shocks to the other axle. Mechanically it's part of the front axle so you won't see a pumpkin between the axles. Interaxle locks this differential so there's a solid connection between the axles. Without it locked one wheel spinning will rob all of the power from the remaining wheels. With the interaxle locked, you'll still have power going to the second axle which will move you if both of it's tires have traction.

FWIW, the PD 9100 series converters with the external Charge Wizard port are easy to make into "constant voltage, constant current" chargers at the voltage of your choice. The 9100 has the Charge Wizard intelligence in the outboard pendant and it varies the voltage on the control line as needed to implement the 3 stage charging. All you have to do is replace the Charge Wizard pendant with a fixed resistive voltage divider or a variable potentiometer. I did this to my 9160 converter 20 years ago so I could manually control the voltage and reduce the current surge in first few minutes of bulk charging to avoid overloading my new Honda EU1000i generator while boondocking. As a bonus, I was also able to manually boost the voltage as high as 16 volts whenever I wanted to do an equalizing charge. I also included a switch so I could use either the manual control or the stock Charge Wizard. The 9100's output voltage is directly controlled by the voltage on the control line, and a constant voltage on that line will make it put out constant voltage up to the converter's maximum current at the voltage of your choice. If the load draws more than the converter's maximum current, the voltage will fold back so the current stays at the maximum value, i.e. "constant voltage, constant current". The PD 9200 converters have the Charge Wizard circuitry inside the converter and can't be controlled this way. Their pendant contains just a LED and switch.

When I lived there and commuted to SF it took me 12 minutes to walk from the far side of Marin Park to the ferry, but I was 20 years younger then and a fast walker.

The Post Office doesn't care who the mail is addressed to at a mail forwarding service. All of the mail is sent to them in bulk and it's up to the service to sort the incoming mail into the individual boxes or mark it Return To Sender. That's why the Post Office won't allow a Change of Address away from a mail forwarder. They'd have to put in extra effort to seperate an individual's mail away from the bulk delivery. If a forwarder goes out of business, they're supposed to continue forwarding mail for 6 months to allow people to make new arrangements and notify everyone of their new address. This didn't happen when MyDakotaAddress went under so the local postmaster bent the rules and allowed clients to file Change of Addresses away from the forwarder. There is a work-around that will let you cancel mail forwarding if you have a fixed address you're going to return to. Go to the Post Office website before you leave and file a Vacation Forwarding request to have mail forwarded from your fixed address to the forwarder while you're gone. The forwarder will then process your mail normally, sending it to you wherever you are. You can do this for up to a year by renewing the Vacation request after 6 months. All of your correspondents will continue to use your fixed address, not the forwarding address. The only exception is if the envelope is marked "Do Not Forward", then it will be returned to sender. https://www.usps.com/manage/forward.htm If you return home early, go to the website and cancel the Vacation Forwarding to resume delivery at your fixed address. Otherwise delivery will resume at the scheduled end date.

Marin RV Park is a 15 minute walk from the Larkspur ferry terminal. It's pricy but it's in the banana belt of the SF Bay microclimates. Warmer than Pacifica but cooler than Napa, Petaluma or Santa Rosa in the summertime. If you're staying in Napa, it would be quicker to take the ferry from Vallejo into the City than drive all the way into Larkspur. Santa Rosa Fairgrounds are an hour drive north of Larkspur during non-commute hours, Petaluma is about half as far. Another choice is the Alameda County Fairgrounds RV Park in Pleasanton. It's three miles south of the Pleasanton BART station, from there it's about an hour ride into SF.

Interesting that the original model they based their design on cost $750 new in 1934, adjusted for inflation that's $14,227 today. On the other hand, their financing package is only $940 a month for 20 years after a $36k down payment. And it will fit behind your Tesla in the pull through charging stations. What's not to like?

But if you follow AZ 95 across the river from downtown Needles you'll come to a large Arco station about a mile north of the bridge where prices are significantly less. GasBuddy currently shows diesel at $3.29 and regular at $3.02 a gallon. That's $1.70 / $1.67 less than Needles prices and lower than just about anywhere else within a 100 mile radius except for a couple of stations in Bullhead City. For me, it's well worth a 10 minute detour from I-40 to fill up. When I went through there a month ago the Arco prices were about $1 a gallon less than in Needles.

No problem. The road is a popular truck route to bypass Los Angeles by going from I-10 to I-40. Two lanes with narrow shoulders from Blythe to Needles, then continuing as two lanes from I-40 west of Needles to the Nevada state line. Then it is freeway all the way to Las Vegas. Just take it slow over the railroad crossing at Goffs Rd. about 6 miles north of I-40 and be SURE to observe the 25 mph limit through the speedtrap town of Searchlight, NV.

Sounds reasonable to me. You seem to have thought out the finances well, including an exit plan. I did something similar, taking a year and a half long midlife break in my RV when I was in my mid 40s and it was great. $3k a month is a reasonable amount, many fulltimers live comfortably on less. Initially you may spend more because new fulltimers tend to start out in "vacation mode", driving long distances from one attraction to another. Sooner or later you'll settle down, staying longer in one place and driving less to the next one. You won't always be sightseeing, you still have to allow time for normal life activities like shopping, laundry and hobbies. Enjoy your travels! If you haven't already, check out the Xscapers group. Please forgive me if you already have, this board doesn't flag whether or not you're an Escapees or Xscapers member. Xscapers is aimed towards working age RVers and their website has many examples of people earning income while on the road.

I parked there overnight prior to the Escapade, arriving around 9:30 pm. There were several cars in the parking lot and the sign on the front door said "Open 7-9". The "Trucks and RVs Welcome" sign had been replaced by one bearing the new name of the restaurant but there were several RVs in the large dirt lot where the Vail Steakhouse had welcomed overnighters so I joined them. The night passed without event, but when I went to have breakfast in the restaurant the next morning the place was deserted and closed up tight. I left for the Escapade and never did find out if the sign meant they were only open from 7-9 PM or if there was another reason they were closed that morning.

Hi Rayne, The primary item you need to monitor the state of charge of your batteries is an amp-hour battery monitor that measures all of the current flowing in or out of the batteries. It keeps a running total of how many amp-hours you've taken out of the batteries, counting down as you use power, counting up as the solar panels push power back into them. Comparing this to the Amp-hour capacity of the batteries will tell you how much capacity remains in the batteries. Your charge controller only knows how much voltage and current it's pushing out, it doesn't know the size of the battery bank, it doesn't know if all of the power it's putting out is going into the batteries or is being used elsewhere. As such, it can't tell you the battery's state of charge, all it knows is to shut down when the battery voltage rises to a level that says the batteries are full. Amps are instantaneous measurements. Amp-hours are Amps X (time), an indication of how much power you've used. For example, using 5 amps for 30 minutes is 2.5 amp-hours, using 5 amps for 1 hour is 5 amp-hours, etc. The same holds true when charging the batteries. Push in 5 amps from the solar panels for one hour and the batteries will gain 5 amp-hours of charge. An amp-hour meter counts up and down as you charge and then use power from the batteries. You'll know at a glance what state your batteries are in, for example if you've taken 50 a-h out of the batteries the meter will read -50. When the solar panels are charging the batteries, the amp-hour meter will climb towards zero, which indicates the batteries are full. Tell me what kinds of charge controller, inverter and monitor panel you have and I'll take a look at them and see if they'll give you the necessary information or if you need to purchase a separate amp-hour meter. Here's a link to the manual for the Trace/Xantrex Battery Status Monitor. Unfortunately, it's discontinued but the manual provides a good, easy to understand description of how an amp-hour meter works. http://www.xantrex.com/documents/Discontinued-Products/3507TraceMeterRevB.pdf

That may have been true a few years ago, but not so much now. Many Xscapers are of working age, they're not retired yet they're fulltiming without a home base. Their RV is their home, and they're using their RV to host a mobile office or other kind of online business. With high speed wireless Internet becoming close to ubiquitous, there's no reason a home business needs to stay at a fixed address.

Yeah, a couple of acres worth of "industrial hemp" was planted last year about a half mile from the Pahrump co-op. When the hemp matured and the wind blowed in the right direction it got pretty aromatic in the park.

And it qualifies for AT&T's Airstream Unlimited Internet access. Essentially the Mobley plan allowing up to 10 devices using hardware built into the trailer. $360 a year for unlimited access, or $25 a month for 5GB. https://www.att.com/plans/connected-car/airstream.html

I bought a used mohilehome in a park when I was in my 20s, also as the most affordable housing in the area. It was a fixer-upper that had been foreclosed on from a cat lady and her two alcoholic sons. I rehabilitated it and lived in it comfortably for several years until I took a job in another city. Just as I was getting ready to sell, the owner converted the park to "55 and over" destroying the home's resale value. Existing families and underage tenants were grandfathered in place, but the home could only be sold to someone over 55. I hung on for another 3 years paying the monthly space rent (which did not increase) while the house stood vacant. Eventually a tenant's suit overturned the 55+ edict and I was able to sell it for a price that let me break even on the original purchase price and the extra 3 years of space rent.

Basically, buying a mobilehome in a park where you only rent the underlying land can be financial suicide. A mobilehome is a depreciating asset like a car or RV, the problem is once it's put in place it's extremely difficult and expensive to re-locate, often exceeding the value of the home itself. About 20 million Americans, or about 18% of the housing market, lives in mobilehomes. Lately major private equity firms have taken notice of this captive market, buying up existing mobilehome parks from mom-and-pop operators and then dramatically increasing the rents to maximize their profits. One entrepreneur even holds day long seminars showing individual investors how to do this. As part of the session they take busloads of prospects through local parks to see the potential first hand. One quote from the organizerr characterizes mobile home park tenants as "Waffle House patrons chained to their booths", unable to leave without abandoning their homes, which then become abandoned property subject to taking by the park owner. Buying a mobile home or a manufacturered house on a piece of property you own is fine, just avoid buying one where someone else owns the land underneath it. Zulu's link jumps in 3:35 from the start of the 15 minute piece. It's worth backtracking and watching it from the beginning. Here's some supplemental reading and videos: The Mobile Home Trap: How A Warren Buffet Empire Preys on the Poor (Seattle Times) Mobile Home Economics (Frank Rolfe) Trailer Park Millionaires

I was a part-time traveller for some 20 odd years even though my RV was my only home. I had a couple of motor homes, a 5th wheel and a travel trailer. I worked full time and travelled in my RV during vacations, planned breaks of up to a year between jobs and during one job where a fluke in the union contract let me take month long unpaid leaves of absence. The rest of the time I lived in long term RV parks for a fraction of what it would have cost to rent an apartment. Since I retired, my RV continues to be my only home and I have a permanent lot in an Escapees co-op park that I visit a couple of times a year for anywhere from a week to a month or two at a time. Does that make me a fulltimer or a part-timer? Who knows, I certainly don't care one way or the other. ☺️

Duplicate post.

Long or short bed determines how sharply you can jackknife the truck to the trailer before the trailer hits the rear of the cab. With an 8 ft. bed you can get a full 90 degree angle between the truck and trailer for extreme maneuvers. However, at this point you're dragging the trailer tires sideways so it should be used only as a last ditch effort. With a shorter bed, the hitch will be mounted closer to the cab so you can't do a full 90 degree turn. The exact sharpness will depend on the truck and trailer geometry and can be determined by careful trial and error. Keep in mind bumper tow trailers can't do a full 90 degree turn either so that may not be as big a factor as you may think. The Ford 6.0 can be made into a reliable engine if it's problems are caught in time. The process is known as Bulletproofing, after Bulletproof Diesel who identified the weak parts and created the kit to fix them. Kind of like Banks Power for the gas engines.

Where is the water? If it's on the floor of the cab it might be due to a plugged drain on the heater/AC fresh air inlet (those vents between the base of the windshield and the hood). If water getting into the air inlet can't drain, it will eventually come out the heater floor outlet or elsewhere. Again, on a 2019 this should be covered by the Ford vehicle warranty

Yep, there's lots of hilarious videos on Youtube taken by the owner of a towing company that runs a custom 4WD tow truck on the beach: https://www.youtube.com/user/HILLAUTOBODY/videos