Second Chance

I use the Satellite Pointer app. I periodically have to recalibrate the compass/location on my phone to keep it accurate. I also have to go into the settings on Satellite Pointer and tell it to acquire the location after we've moved. After doing #1 every few months and #2 each time we move, the app is accurate enough to use. You can Google on how to recalibrate your phone (differs depending on phone model and whether it is Apple or Android).

Rob

2 minutes ago, mptjelgin said:

We not only use our inverter for boondocking, but also as an uninterruptible power supply to keep things running when the power drops unexpectedly.  For this reason we prefer the sub-panel, as we don't want our electric water heater element or air conditioner on the inverter circuits. 

Same here.

Rob

4 minutes ago, spindrift said:

I've been looking for something larger than 15K, but haven't found it.  We're in Texas and this is the first summer where we've camped in "excessive" heat and unfortunately, we were in direct sunlight.  All of those factors, in addition to people and two large dogs make for a pretty hefty heat load.  That's why I'm looking for options that would include auxiliary A/C.

The past several years we have spent a month at a time at Jojoba Hills SKP Resort in SoCal. It gets very hot there, too. We've seen several folks who have set up external ACs (some refrigerated, some evaporative... which may not work for you depending on which part of Texas you're in). They are ducted into the RV from outside. I've seen this on both towables and coaches. When they leave with their RV, they put the ducting in their storage shed and leave the external AC where it is. Of course, this is a co-op park with permanently assigned sites so they can do that.

Rob

How old are your Coleman units and have you had the 15K checked for refrigerant charge? We have two Coleman Mach 15K units on a fifth wheel about the same size as yours (with lots of big glass) and they're doing a great job. Heat index where we are in Maryland was 112 degrees yesterday and we came home from the grandkids' to an RV that was 74 degrees inside - a little below where we had set the thermostats.

Rob

Edit: I see that your fiver is a 2019 so those ACs should be no more than two years old.

1 hour ago, Bill Joyce said:

If the slide has rollers that go on the carpet you have to be careful.  You might need to carry pieces of wood (thin plywood works) to put under the rollers when you put the slide in and out to protect your new floor.  This might just be a Newmar problem, but I am waning you in case you have slide rollers.  

It's not just a Newmar or coach issue. Some of us with fifth wheels are getting marks on the hard flooring as the slide goes in and out. Lippert makes a product called Slide Slickers (pricey) and I just found an alternative on Walmart.com for 1/3 the price - AP Products 013-410051 Slide-Out Slicker. I just got a pair of the LCI version and they work great. Both products are a hard, slick plastic.

Rob

2 hours ago, Kirk W said:

Take a look at the commercial members list to see who is there. There is no financial company on the endorsed vendor list, but Alliant Credit Union has a very good reputation with members. 

Alliant has a good reputation as does Essex Credit (Bank Of The West). We've had very good experience working with Essex Credit and they cater to full-timers (RV and boat).

Rob

3 hours ago, Kirk W said:

 

I believe that Grand Design is using Lippert Components (LCI) frames and jacks, which probably means that Lippert is the one doing the design. There are a lot of RV builders who use their products as I am pretty sure that they are the largest supplier of RV frames. While I am not an engineer, one would think that Lippert employees some of them and that such loading was considered? 

Kirk is correct - Grand Design utilizes Lippert chassis and hydraulic systems. As with most manufacturers, though, GD specs the frames and Lippert builds them to spec. All of GD's Solitude line with hydraulic landing gear and stabilizers come with the front landing gear angled slightly outward. I put an 18" piece of pressure treated 2 x 12 sideways under the front pads so they can slip a little if needed... they never have that I've been able to discern. I've also not read of any front landing gear failures or leakage on the Solitudes on the two GD forums, either. I have, however, read of a couple of leaky cylinders on the back four that came from the factory that way.

Rob

21 hours ago, Kirk W said:

I believe that Rob is speaking about aircraft in flight.  While we don't generally include them in the recreation vehicle group, my friend owns one purely for recreational purposes. 

I think Pappy was just being funny...

Rob

Does it have an LCD read-out on the front and, if so, is it flashing an error code?

Rob

2 hours ago, jpatrickc said:

Are you sure the Wally only has a single tuner? I have a Wally and can have its record 1 channelnwhile I watch another channel. That makes me think it has 2 tuners. When I use it at home with a dish with 3 feed horns I can record any channel while watching another. In the rv with a Pathway x2 dish I can only record another channel if it is on the same satellite as the channel I am watching.

Pat

That's essentially what I said - but with a Pathway X2 the Wally will not allow us to watch a second channel - even it it's on the same satellite. Maybe a difference in firmware?

Rob

In defensive driving courses they teach that, if you can't avoid hitting someone that pulls out in front of you, to steer to the rear of their vehicle. There's a small chance you may clear them since you're steering opposite the direction they're moving and, if not, you hit the lighter rear end of a front-engine vehicle. In this case, a 1979 travel trailer, while a sad loss, would likely have been lighter than a pickup truck. It might seem counter-intuitive... like pushing forward on the stick at the beginning of a stall-spin.

Rob

4 hours ago, lemnade said:

Thanks Rob, I too have seen others using a ssd and that is why we are confused.

Another question for you Rob. Since you have a Wally, can you watch one station and record another at the same time? Just in case we need a new receiver. Thanks again

With an automatic antenna (which can only "see" one satellite at a time), the Wally is a single-tuner receiver. This means you cannot view a second channel while recording on the first. The geeks on the satellite TV forums report that, if you set it up with a three-LNB antenna (a fixed antenna with three nodes like used in a residential installation), the Wally actually has a second tuner and will allow you to watch one channel and record another. I've never tested this claim.

Rob

TIP: use "Quote" when replying as I have here if you want to ask a question of a specific person.

Our answer would have to be, "It depends." Unless we're near family - especially grandkids - we like to keep moving. Exceptions to this have been a summer on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington where, in three months, we only stayed in two parks. Twice we have spent two to three months wintering in my hometown in southern NM... not a bad place to winter and I have family there. We often spend a month or more at a military FamCamp in Maryland near grandkids during the summer (we're doing three months here this summer). Finally, the shut-downs with the pandemic changed everything for us this year and we had to hunker down for three months where we were in Georgia - not our favorite location, but a park we know and have experience with since we have to go there annually for our medical and dental appointments. Other than the above, we average 7,500 - 10,000 miles a year on the rig. Our five-year average including the long stays listed above is seven nights per stay. Of Course, there are a lot of one- and two-night stays in there when we're on the move.

Rob

If you're talking about an LED battery indicator with three or four lights, they're not exactly a precision instrument and I would first verify that you can trust what it's telling you. Do all the 12 volt devices seem to operate normally (LED lights come on and are bright, controls on RV frig and ACs working OK, etc.)? Have you bumped your battery cut-off switch accidentally and taken your battery off-line? If you have a digital voltmeter, take readings at the battery terminals. A fully charged 12 volt lead-acid battery should measure about 12/6 - 12/9 volts and about 11.4 volts when fully discharged. 

Rob

Polk County Supervisor of Elections

According to the company line from the Dish web site, solid state memory is not compatible with the receivers. Elsewhere on the internet, it looks like some people are using them. We still have a compact portable HDD (not externally powered) connected to our Wally. Be aware that some receivers require USB 2.0 and some USB 3.0.

Rob

2 hours ago, rickeieio said:

Where do you stay in Cincinnati?  Indian Springs is between our house and our farm, on the west side of Cincy.

We've have a "special" reservation for one month at the FMCA campground. It's only about 10 minutes from the kids in Madeira. We've found slim pickings in the Cinci area - limited by either stay limits or seasonal closings. We've stayed at a place in Reading, but it's run-down and next to a furniture factory... kind of a dumpster without a lid with a bunch of older, run-down RVs and mobile homes. Don't want to do that again.

Rob

We had just pulled in to Augusta, GA, the end of February and had taken delivery of our new RV when the pandemic curtain came down. Our spring/summer plans had included a series of military FamCamps up the east coast - Charleston, Norfolk, Richmond to see the MIL, and then Aberdeen Proving Ground in MD for the summer near grandkids. One by one our reservations started contacting us to cancel. Fortunately for us (not of you're a golf fan), the Masters golf tournament was postponed which meant we weren't kicked out of the park in Augusta and had a safe, if not scenic, place to hunker down for a few months while things were shut down.

As soon as we got the call from APG that they were allowing folks back into the FamCamp, we hit the road. We spent a week at the Army Resort at the big lake up from Augusta, and then made our way to Maryland. We've spent some time with the kids since getting here and are now isolating again for a couple of weeks so we can go back to Richmond (without the RV) and visit Laura's mom. The retirement community in which she lives just opened back up on a limited basis yesterday. We're reserved here at APG through 6 August and may extend another month since we're not due in Cincinnati until 15 September for the birth of another grandbaby.

On a related note, we did our first almost-five-years of full-timing without a washer and dryer. As LindaH alluded to, I was extremely concerned by the behavior of some people and conditions at the laundromat near the park in Augusta. We felt we could no longer take that risk and, a couple of weeks after taking delivery of our new RV, we pulled it back to the dealer and had a washer and dryer installed in the dedicated/prepped W/D closet. In the ensuing 3+ months, we've come to realize that it's one of the best three or four upgrades we've ever made to an RV. We are so grateful for it - especially during these times.

Rob

6 hours ago, rynosback said:

But you hook your Firestick to it. And it is attached to your Amazon account. 

No - not any more. The Fire Stick and Roku TV stay connected to our Mi-Fi with unlimited data, now.

Rob

We're still using a combination of Dish (with a Pathway X2 antenna to get around the obstruction issues) and a Roku TV for NetFlix, Prime Video, and several of the other offerings. I have considered YouTube TV (we have unlimited data on a Verizon Mi-Fi), but sometimes find ourselves in places where the cellular signal or bandwidth won't support streaming. We'll gladly reconsider if our situation changes someday.

Rob

29 minutes ago, David-and-Cheryl said:

Well, yes and no. It's true that in a state that requires special licensing, they have to honor the requirements of the state where you're licensed. So, for instance, if you're driving in NM (which requires special licensing), you're legal if you have the proper license for the state where you're licensed. That could be a Class A or B Exempt license from Texas, or a regular passenger vehicle license from Florida (which has no special license requirements). I'm now licensed in Florida, and with my normal passenger vehicle license I can legally drive my rig anywhere in the country, even though it would require a Class A license in Texas and some other states.

However, the reverse is not true. If you're driving in a state that does not require special licensing, I'm pretty confident that you won't get a citation for not being properly licensed in your home state (assuming of course that you have a valid license for a regular passenger vehicle). You're not violating the laws of that state, and a state law enforcement officer probably does not have the authority to cite you for violating the laws of any other state. For that matter, they probably wouldn't even know (or care) that your home state requires a special license.

I'm not going to continue this argument with you - I'll let an active or retired LEO chime in. Lets just hope that "solber" doesn't follow your advice and have an accident...

Rob

31 minutes ago, David-and-Cheryl said:

... However, since you're going on a road trip, you can easily do your practice in a state that doesn't require a special class of license to drive your particular rig. I don't know your route, but according to http://changingears.com/rv-sec-state-rv-license.shtml, Utah, Arizona and Idaho have no special licensing requirements.

That's not quite true since everything is based on the state where you are licensed - not the state where you are driving. 

Rob

On 5/31/2020 at 10:22 AM, solber said:

Thank you all for these posts.... I've been wondering what the status is, of getting this license due to the limited DMV operations post Covid. This is super helpful, so thank you to everyone that took the time (and patience) to begin and add to this post.  Super helpful...

One question that I do have still.... once one passes the "written" test, does that then serve as a "learner's permit"? I'd LOVE to have some real behind the wheel practice, and help my DH drive from Texas to Oregon to visit our son, and then take the actual driving test once we got home in a month. My hubby does have his license to drive our bus. 

No - not in Texas. You are not licensed to drive the rig until you have passed the driving portion of the test, they take your class C license from you, and hand you a (paper) temporary while you wait for your license in the mail.

Rob

I've never been a DirecTV customer, so I can't comment on what's going on with them. All I can say is that it's extremely quick and easy to use the smartphone app to change the locals on out Dish outdoor account whenever we move from one market area to another. It takes about two minutes - less time than it takes me to set out the antenna (we use a Pathway X2 carry-out so there's a better chance of getting a clear shot at the satellites in a wooded campground or park). Our Flex Pack with locals is about $50/month.

Rob

1 hour ago, Kirk W said:

Texas DMV also has a form available online that you can use to notify the DMV that your vehicle has been transferred to a new owner. That is important because it removes you from any liability if the RV is used while your license plates remain on it. 

You should keep your license plate and not let the new owner have it. You either destroy it or return it to the TX DMV - there's a place on the notification form to say what you did with it. We are domiciled in TX and just sold an RV in GA to someone who lives in NC...

Rob