NATCOA?

[SidecarFlip]

What the heck is that? I got my latest e-mail issue of Truck Camper Magazine and there was an article in there about NATCOA and how the member is free now.

Never knew it cost anything because I'm not and never have been a member (like I'm not a Good Sam Member either). Never have been one to pay for or want a membership in anything, Amy and I are loners.

Guess if you like campground camping and people next door, it's all good but we bought a TC to camp remote not in a campground. In fact, the only time we do stay in any campground is on a planned long distance trip and then it's one night.

So anyway, what is NATCOA?

[Bedlam]

Searching for information on Facebook is painful. Also there is no way to categorize threads into sections. I just think too much good data will get lost and the only ones that will benefit will be the ones running analytics and A.I. against the database.

[monkey44]

Facebook has its use, family stuff mostly, if you make a private family page.

Otherwise, it's mostly the National Enquirer of advertising 🙂

[jaycocreek]

A lot of Facebook haters here. I rarely do anything on FB other than look at the Marketplace..An excellent source for local and semi-local items for sale that never gets put on Craigslist like Truck campers/trailers/tires etc.

Well worth it to me for the good deals that popup from time to time.

[BradW]

I joined the natcoa forum many years ago. I still go there occasionally. I guess beddows still runs it? I hate fb and will never join fb.

[GeoBoy]

Became a member on 2006 and was a participant until we went to a TT in 2010. We switched back to a TC on 2015 and visited the website occasionally but we are not Facebook members and will never be so I guess it’s goodbye. Too bad.

[Optimistic_Para]

As far as truck campers are concerned, this forum here on RV.NET seems too be the most useful source of information. It has the most participants and posts

New posts on the NATCOA site were few and far between. The same can be said for the iRV2 and RVForum sites. They HAVE truck camper forums, but not a lot of activity on them. Sometimes a week or more between new posts.

The Escapees forum doesn't even HAVE a truck camper forum.

The Truck Camper Adventure site has an associated forum. But it's not as busy as here.

Wander The West has a pretty good forum devoted to truck campers.

Finally, the Ford Truck Enthusiasts forum has a sub-forum devoted to "slide in campers" that I find useful. I don't know if any GM or Ram truck forums have anything or not.

[joerg68]

Miss it? Where is it going?

To a place where many people will no longer see it. The FB page has no public content, and I have no FB user and do not intend to change that any time soon.

I was a member since 2008 or so, shortly after we got into TCing. TBH, there is not much left to be missed, so there is that.

[deltabravo]

Kayteg1 wrote:
When some private forums are really great, where you can find honest information without sale pitches, they lack the power of advertising forum on other sites, so commercial forum like this one prevail.
Sad part of life, you can't have honest forum with lot of posters.

There are a lot of great automotive forums that started as private entities as well, all from people volunteering their time and effort to keep them running. Nearly all of them have been sold out by their founding fathers to AutoGuide.com, which is a HUGE conglomerate comany that runs hundreds of forums now.

[sljohnson1938]

ahh - the Glacier rally, that was the best one we were on. The ride on the Red bus up to the top was really nice. What is it called ? Going to the Sun hiway? What year was that? I think it was 2016.

we have been to Glacier several times but never did the Red Bus thing.
Maybe some day we will do it again.

On edit -
was just remembering, the first time we were there was in about 1972.
we lived in California at the time and we were going up Calgary, AB to the Calgary Stampede. We drove thru Glacier and up the Going to the Sun hiway. Our three kids had never seen snow. They had a great time, got out of the car to play in it. Wow.

[Bedlam]

Many of us have family that needs assistance - I have to ensure we have phone/Internet coverage anywhere we travel because of our commitments and have eliminated much of our international travel.

[mountainkowboy]

covered wagon wrote:
I met some really fantastic people there. It was never political.... just good good people and fun to be with.
I melted away from the events when my mother got elderly and I started traveling to visit her twice a year. We started family gatherings in the eastern Sierras that she loves only an hour or so from her place.

We joined in 2011 and made it to the Glacier Park rally...fun times. Since then we have also been tending to aging family and are just starting to get back into TC's.

[monkey44]

The problem with today and forums is that typical money farm mentality. We have very few forums now that simply exchange information and build friendships. But hen again, someone spend time and money developing and monitoring it. One free example is the military campgrounds site, completely free, but now contains some ads, not intrusive and the value of that site to our retired military campers is tremendous for those that travel a lot.

And, this also brought about the birth of "click bait" as well. Even beyond that, once tech folks figured out it can advertise on these forum sites, or make a forum part of a business, then the use of forums became less valuable as social media and became a different sort of advertising, When a forum member has a problem, who is the first to respond sometimes, well the monitors who look for issues - like leak preps - and then provide a link to their own product.

Sometimes, that's a good thing and offers a solution, sometimes it's another sales method or pitch. So it provides value, but often lessens the initial value of forums.

Some forums begin as non-profits then change over to profit making once it begins to accumulate members. Some are not as ethical about it as I like to see in an NPO, but it's the way of the web today.

[AnEv942]

I saw simply saw NATCOA as another TC forum. Joined late 2005 though I didn't really utilize that much. Not a rally/event person think I only paid dues 1st couple of years because I liked the format or 'mission' statement at the time. Never got involved with the PC issues or friction between members or groups.

Moving to Facebook seems an uphill climb as there are already few fairly large F/B groups. I think the TCM article outlines NATCOA fairly well.

[Kayteg1]

Z-Peller wrote:
Was a fellow on RV. Net many years ago that had clashs with mods over various postings and rules so decided to start his own RV forum....called it NATCO

I know about more forums created the same way.
Years ago, not only rv forum was new baby, but whole internet chat had lot of baby teeth.
When it was "work in progress" the definition of "troll" was still in the making, hardcore advertisements was the highest priority and "political correctness" was still thing of the future.
That said at this time RV.net forum helped in organizing several rallies, one in So California had over 100 members on it. Great times and I still have rv.net T-shirt.
We all made lot of things that now are consider wrong (cost me my original handle in the process) but eventually everything ironed-up over the years.
Same thing happen on Ford Truck Forums and thousands of others.
When some private forums are really great, where you can find honest information without sale pitches, they lack the power of advertising forum on other sites, so commercial forum like this one prevail.
Sad part of life, you can't have honest forum with lot of posters.

[54suds]

monkey44 wrote:

54suds wrote:
natcoa history test ?? does anybody know: where the baton is it ? who made it ? what was its purpose ?

To answer your question; although this might get removed.

Monkey44 created the “Baton” from an old wooden baluster post. It currently resides in Monkey44’s office, and a few years ago, permanently retired to Florida.

The Baton was born on Cape Cod, and its initial member meeting took place at Plimoth Rock, Mass. It then traveled to NH and Maine, then met up with Jerry and Paula Gale (A founding member) for the initial “Pass the Baton” event in Calais at the Canadian border, then on across the country, handed off again to Bill and Sandy Moody in Vermont. Then it passed (like a TC pony express mail) to various TC campers and joined many members for dinner over a campfire across the nation.

The webmaster for the group was kicked off RV.net and banned for too many policy violations and recruiting here – so he built the Na …. Website and cultivated camping members to join it. Together, several of us promoted it as an NPO, but unfortunately, it eventually went commercial as it is now.

The Baton always traveled d in a TC, and criss-crossed the country, hit California, then Mexico and Canada, eventually turned back across the USA again, and to Cape Cod, and eventually retired to Florida.

Monkey44 (Cape Cod) and Jerry Gale (Canada) originally brought forth the idea of an international TC camping group, and became founding members along with Jerry Galeng (Budster, Calif) Several others collaborated with the group and we developed a non-profit organization (State of Washington) under the premise that we promote “Leave No Trace” camping and international friendship between TC owners, who often camp remotely. The members have always been fun, exchanging good camping spots, etc. … but the BOD changed politically and began charging fees and advertising, and eventually turned almost completely commercial on the “Owner” end, and not an NPO supporting wilderness protection and cleanliness as was the initiation premise.

Its membership has always been a great bunch of campers. Monkey44 met and camped with many members over the years. Eventually, the leaders of the group became too political and too commercial, and the initial camping ideas and meeting new folks fell by the wayside, and it exposed itself as a commercial site instead, as you can see on the website today.

Many members continue the original concepts, but behind the scenes changed significantly and Monkey44 resigned due to the commercial activity changes. The BOD became much too tumultuous when commercialism took over and eventually some broke off and pursued other interests. It may have changed again over the years, but Monkey44 has had no contact with the administrative group for years, although some of our original member friendships remain even today.

thanks for refreshing my memories , back at the start you and I talked several times about passing the bat on and I met Paula & Gerry, I believe at several north east rallies The one thing I miss is where they went to a mfg and did a in honnest" depth" report on how each company actually constructed their product unlike all the fluff (sponsor approved) quality reports we now get!