Chalkie

Amazon has them for less at $349 just FYI.

13 hours ago, Randyretired said:

 I don't know how to get a Colorado license without an address like is available in Texas. Colorado vehicle registration isn't cheap.

Registration in Colorado - ain't that the truth! Our RV in Colorado,  2016 Infinity 5er, was running me over $500/yr and the truck over $600. When we moved to Texas that became around $75 each. And no the Texas license was not hard to get. 

However, that is one reason a lot of folks choose South Dakota. No income taxes and no special driver license. I don't know the registration fees but I hear they are lower than Colorado but more than Texas.

18 hours ago, sandsys said:

Ugh! I'm glad you were not outside at the time!

Linda

Reminds me of a similar hail storm we had many years ago when we too lived in the Springs. My in-law's were visiting and this storm came down from the north. It honestly sounded like a tornado or multiple railroad engines as it approached from the sound it made on the roofs of the houses. My father-in-law wanted to go out and gather up some hailstones while they were "fresh". I warned him if he went out and got knocked cold he was there until the storm ended, so he threw a bucket over his head and went anyhow. /sigh/

Those Front Range hail storms were probably the worst weather events in my opinion. 

I talked to my son since he was out of town on July 4th and asked if he had damage, his response was no. It apparently was all in the more southern area where you live. 

I another note - your siding looks like it came through pretty well, at least as far as I can tell from the pics. What happened to the gutters on your shed was what I hated about it. 2 or 3 years in the Colorado sun made it brittle. 

3 hours ago, justRich said:

Unknown to me, is if you can import a KML/KMZ file into other mapping programs. . .
Best of luck to those who try, and if you can, describe it to the rest of us. (please)

While perhaps not your everyday mapping program KML/KMZ files can be imported to Google Earth. KML stands for Keyhole Markup Language and KMZ is the same but zipped. Supposedly they can be used for any internet based mapping system. 

OK then. If this pans out and is in line with the current costs of electric vehicles, I have to admit that I would likely be onboard.

Here in the north Austin area I use a tech that is not the cheapest, nor is he the most expensive, but his work and work ethic have me completely impressed. He charges $125 trip charge, and $150/hr labor. If he has to come back for some reason there is no trip charge and a couple times he has not even charged additional labor as he felt he should have solved an issue on the first trip. 

3 hours ago, justRich said:

Failure to keep up with technology may be part of the problem.
I see two retarded areas: 

1) Can't load photos larger 2.83 kB 
2) Forum isn't cell phone friendly

Digital storage is very, very cheap.
Failure to be cell phone friendly will choke a website

As the older tech users age out, potential new users will find their way on handheld devices.
Facts of life. . .

This! This right here. ^^^

I have 5 personal domains and aside from the cost of the domains themselves the plan I have offers up to 250,000 files with unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited MySQL, unlimited PostgreSQL, unlimited emails..... you can see a trend here with the unlimited stuff and I pay $115/year. The same company offers a commercial plan which offers a much higher file limit and is hosted on high capacity, super high speed servers for about $275/year. 

Invision Community which powers this site shows that they have cell phone friendly options. 

I see no excuse why this site can't be dragged into the 2020's to suit the capabilities and devices of all users.

1 hour ago, TXiceman said:

I used Streets and Trips for many years but could not get it to work when I replaced my laptop.  I made the transition to RV Trip Wizard and it has worked reasonably well.  But as time goes on, the product is suffering from "Bloatware".  People keep asking for things to be added in to make it not only a planning tool but a records tool as well.  I would love to see something closer to the original RV Trip Wizard and lose all the excess baggage.

Ken

While we may have differing definitions of "Bloatware" I do know that you can turn off or minimize pretty much any tool or feature that you do not want to use so that it can be used stripped down or full featured. 

While not completely straightforward you can also export the planned trip to a file for import into a Garmin GPS for those that like to use a GPS rather than the small screen on a phone.

I will have to give you an A+ for ingenuity. Our mattress does the same but it is a Sleep Number so I just let the air out and it scrunches up fine. I will have to mention your solution to friends that struggle though. 

So is this still operating on a gutted version of Android? That is my chief complaint with my current Fire Tablet.

10 hours ago, 2gypsies said:

May 22 was the last post - a month ago.  He usually posted daily.

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.

6 hours ago, Lou Schneider said:

He's been active on The RV Forum (www.rvforum.net).

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?

30 minutes ago, Sky King76 said:

So…one other thing. On a positive note from all the help here, is that if the A\C is only pulling roughly 7.6Amps of AC current, then when we visit friends we can easily plug in to their 15-20Amp socket and be good without a beefy 30Amp, as long as we turn the A\C off when running the microwave\convection for example. We don’t use hairdryers or the like so this may work out.

or… Am I missing something here?

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.

1 hour ago, GlennWest said:

Also can't get a vechile inspected on weekend. So even if I got weekend off couldn't get it inspected. I finally found a person to do inspection unseen. It is illegal. I am glad it is over.

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.

1 hour ago, GlennWest said:

Most all my  work was in Texas though

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

2 hours ago, GlennWest said:

I am very happy about this. It is a pain to get mine inspected. With work I be on place long time and registration comes due and I can't get it inspected. 

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. 

2 hours ago, sandsys said:

My leaky memory says there are some Canadian companies building quality rigs. Does that qualify as foreign?

Linda

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.

27 minutes ago, JimK said:

 It took foreign competition to change the market.  We need the same for the RV industry.  

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.