Future full timer questions. Sorry if this is a repeat

I have always preferred Travel trailers.If you are 62 or older,get the America the beautiful pass. You get into and National Park or Historic site free and camping in any federal campgrounds ( National Parks, COE,Forest Service )is half price. If you're boon docking,you will need 2 batteries,a generator and or solar panels to keep your batteries charged. I would look for a unit that has large tanks for freshwater,grey water and black water. We have a 26ft Keystone Cougar that has 60 gallon freshwater tank, a 30 gallon black water tank and 2 grey water tanks,one for the kitchen and one for the bath. This can increase the time between fill ups and dumping. I would make sure all your lights are LED so to save your batteries. Get the book Low Cost and Free Campgrounds.Have a portable grill like a Webber Q grill and learn to cook in foil to save in clean ups. We like to mix chicken or fish with cut up potatoes,onions and frozen,beans,corn or carrots. The frozen veggies keep everything moist.You can also make egg omlettes etc in foil.

We travel and boondock for much of the summer and I do a website for a union and my main site (see below) and need good internet. Hada DataStorm Sat System for 10 years and it got 1.2M down but stopped working as old technology.
So got one of the first deployed HughesNetGen5 Mobile unit.
Normally the new Gen5 service is only for stationary use but we are allowed to use it as a mobile and that means we don't have to call Hughes to get registered when we move. This is a spot beam service so a lot more complicated. After noticing we were not following pointing procedures, we discovered what we were doing wrong, and it came right up and we locked on to the spot beam. Much easier than we thought it would be. Not much more than setting up a DirecTV portable dish. We got this system through the wonderful folks at http://www.mobileinternetsatellite.com/index.php
Barb and Joe are great to work with and made it so easy to learn how to make this work for us and got us moved up to get this as we were pressed for time leaving the Tucson area.
Now a few things to know about this mobile service. Hughes requires you to buy a business account through a vender like above and use a .98 dish unlike a residential .78 oval dish (like a DirecTV dish). So a little bigger to carry around but it is 3' 3" round so not that huge. All you need to know is at the above link and feel free to contact Barb with questions. We could not be more happy with our service. Oh and BTW Hughes gives you unlimited downloads for the first 20 days so you can update any large files you may need. And if and when you use up your download limit they don't cut you off but allow download speeds of about 3 Meg. So even that is fast for satellite internet, methinks. My old DataStorm F1 dish that I had for over 10 years had a max of 1.2 download speed. With this, I will still have double that speed even when over my download limit. WOW can't beat that. And as a backup we have Verizon 4G grandfathered unlimited data when in a good service area. And if in poor service area we have a Willson WeBoost Cell Amp we are good to go with a backup system.

beemerphile1 wrote:
Late model GM vehicles have an unlimited data internet hotspot for $20 per month. They claim it has a much stronger receiver than a cell phone.

My Buick shows wifi but when I checked the service was from AT&T and as a full-timer and boondock and knew that would not work well for me as Verizon has better coverage.

Late model GM vehicles have an unlimited data internet hotspot for $20 per month. They claim it has a much stronger receiver than a cell phone.

Bill.Satellite wrote:

Dcomer wrote:

bigorange wrote:
I also work remotely in IT, but have only worked from my trailer a couple of times.

Are you a fulltimer? If so what do you do the rest of the time?

No, he hopes to full time in 3 years.

What a coincidence. I plan on going full time in 3 years too. 3 years time and 2 IT professionals...pfft we can figure this out.

Dcomer wrote:

bigorange wrote:
I also work remotely in IT, but have only worked from my trailer a couple of times.

Are you a fulltimer? If so what do you do the rest of the time?

No, he hopes to full time in 3 years.

bigorange wrote:
I also work remotely in IT, but have only worked from my trailer a couple of times.

Are you a fulltimer? If so what do you do the rest of the time?

So I am going to have to put a lot more thought into the internet issue. The good news I have lots of time to figure it out. I've been busy since signing up on the forums so I haven't gone through a whole bunch of it but I plan on doing some heavy reading over the next few weeks. There is a large Apache? RV dealership not far from me. I think I will run out there this weekend. I'll keep you updated on what I find

I also work remotely in IT, but have only worked from my trailer a couple of times. That was using Verizon hotspot from my phone in town and no issues. Wouldn’t be viable for me long-term though. Based on sketchy performance with RV park WiFi in my experience I wouldn’t count on that as a reliable option.

I personally prefer a trailer, but you could easily use a Class C with a small toad vehicle. Agree with others...check them out at RV parks or a RV show and see what you like. Good idea to purchase ahead of time and try it out before jumping in. Might even try a couple weeks or month of full timing and see how it goes.

coolmom42 wrote:
Satellite services will require a generous battery bank and a good inverter, plus a generator to re-charge the batteries if you don't have shore power or extensive solar.

I am not sure if you have ever checked the power requirements of a satellite internet system but they are pretty low. A satellite modem might use more than a MiFi device but it's really not a battery killer.