Chalkie

The thought occurs to me that he may be pulling back some since he is technically no longer an RVer having sold both RV and truck now. I, for one, don't think that should matter but I certainly can't speak for him.

Facebook too. And he has been here as well which y'all can check by just clicking on someone's profile. Just sayin'.

At one point I did a lot of off roading one roads that had been scraped out of the mountains 100 years or more ago. To put it mildly, they were very rough. I got tired of constantly cleaning up the acid that made its way out of the batteries, a little can cause a lot of corrosion, so I switched over to AGM batteries. Yes, they are more expensive but they offer so much in versatility, they don't leak anything even upside down. Better yet, for me, they recharged faster and were far less susceptible to cold damage, as the ATVs were just kept outside the cabin and Colorado winters can be really cold at 9000'+ elevation.

I will second RV Trip Wizard. I have used it for thousands of miles from Texas to Michigan to Idaho and back. It has never lead me astray. There is a free trial period but to me the annual subscription is well worth it if you are going to travel much.

I also gave Zero-G hoses but they are a gray color and the heated hose is blue.

Interesting article in there concerning where to locate Space Force Headquarters. To me it would seem a no brainer for placing it in Colorado. There is Schriever SFB (Space Force Base) redesignated from AFB that has been dealing with satellites and space nearly since its inception. There is Buckley SFB in Aurora which again for a lot of years has had a hand in all things satellite and space. And finally there is Peterson SFB, long time home to such historic entities as NORAD, and current home to Northcom, North American Aerospace Defense Command, Space Operations Command, Cheyenne Mountain SFS, and current HQ of Space Command. Why would anyone want to choose another reason to move all or most of that somewhere else?

No that should work just fine as long as you are aware of using other things and you seem to be on top of that. I would try to make sure that you are on a 20 amp circuit if at all possible and potentially expect issues if you plug into a GFCI. A GFCI can sometimes interpret the surge when starting a motor (like the a/c) as a fault and trip off.

I question how you came up with 76 amps. I am currently running two a/c's with fans, TV and some miscellaneous electronics running and am only using 29 amps. Yes, I am on 50 amps but 30 amp RVs generally only have one a/c but you get the idea. In a normal scenario when you are plugged into shore power everything that runs on 120/240 volts is getting its electricity from the shore. Your rig also will have a convertor which charges the batteries. If you need to run say a residential refrigerator while you are not connected to shore power then you would have an inverter which takes 12v from the batteries in and outputs 120v/60Hz electricity to run it. You can also mix solar panels into all this put since I do not have solar I can not comment.

I will agree that trailer inspections are a joke in that they have to be taken to an inspection location. There is no good reason a trailer or RV can't be inspected on site as long as an inspector is willing to visit the site. A friend found an inspector near us that will visit and do the inspection (yes, it is illegal technically) and that is what we too have done. On that note though, unless your trailer is going to be on the road you can also just forego the inspection and tag renewal until you are ready to move again if you want. I see people in our homebase park doing this all the time with no penalty.

OK, I guess I am confused then. Nothing new.

You can register your vehicles without having the inspection you will just have to have it inspected the next time you are in the state. The inspection here in Texas is pretty minimal compared to some states and, personally, I am all for it if it keeps the folks with bald tires, burned out bulbs, semi-functional wipers, etc. off the road. The emissions "testing" is pretty minimal too as all it looks at is if any emissions parts have been removed or disabled. In Colorado I had have my truck emissions tested on a dyno and here diesels are exempt.

There are but none that make larger travel trailers or fifth wheels. I have no idea what kind of import duties there might be on any of them, if any.

You are correct, I think, although the cost of importing/shipping might be a bar to reasonable pricing unless the quality was markedly better. Another thought would be a foreign company establishing a factory in the US much like VW did in the 70's.

That seems like a lot of hardware. Wouldn't it just be easier to use a laptop? I use both the Messenger and Messages apps on my laptop for texting. I can also use Windows to link to my phone although between smart watch and phone having another device ring is just plain annoying.

I, too, use Windy. I am always impressed at how accurate and easy to read the information is there.

My dash cam can record sound, therefore whatever is going on inside the truck, but I have that option turned off.

I'm one of those that loves T-Mobile for phone service, but I had a terrible experience with their WiFi 5G hotspot and therefore am not interested at all in trying the home internet. The hotspot would report that it only had 4G or even 3G service when my 5G phone had full bars. The home internet service, to my understanding, needs to be near 5G towers in order to function properly and based on the hotspot I don't think I would trust it.

Infrastructure 😉

I don't offhand know of any wifi enabled dash cams although I suppose there might be some. One thing to remember about a dash cam though is that like the EDR ("black box") that can be subpoenaed by law enforcement or insurance companies, so can a dash cam if they are aware of its existence. I have a dash cam for my protection but I think that if I thought an accident might be my fault the SD card might vanish. 😁

So you will pay an added $200/year on your registration that for Texans is a bit of sticker shock, however, it is still dirt cheap compared to the cost of vehicle registration in other states.

That must be a really, really tight space for someone to hit a slide or walk on your hose or cable.

13700 maximum for trailer or fifth wheel/gooseneck. You can find that info on this page. https://media.gm.com/media/ca/en/chevrolet/vehicles/silveradohd/2016.tab1.html

I will continue to use the Garmin RV until a head unit comes along that will let me enter the height and weight of the RV so that it will route me around low overpasses or bridges that can not bear the weight. With the lifetime map updates I can keep the maps up to date. I also do not totally trust it, nor do I totally trust Google maps, so when I have my route I look it over using Google Earth or a paper map or both.

2WD or 4WD, box length and SRW or DRW?

I think that Starlink's solution was truly was more than fair and while you did struggle with resolution they came through in the end. As well, yYou ended up with an antenna that was smaller and lighter and a router that was better. The gen 2 router will operate over a wider spread of temps, is IP54 rated, and is 3X3, MU-MIMO (vs, 2X2 on gen 1). I have seen some RVers using that router outside so they do not have run a cable inside, they just use either the outlet on the side of the RV or in the basement.