brholt
Explorer II
Joined Nov 17, 2010
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Re: Autosocks
F350 DRW with AF1150, 3 peak mountain tires. I have carried them for years since sometimes even 4 wheel drive vehicles are required to have traction devices onboard and they are easy to carry. I have used them once. We were in the California mountains heading to a Harvest Host. Blizzard had closed the highway just beyond our campsite. Drove down a long downward sloping twisty driveway through a foot of wet fresh snow to the farm. During the day the weather warmed up with fresh snow. That night temperatures plunged. In the morning I went out to the driveway to check it out. Covered in ice under the snow. I couldn’t even walk on it. Put the Auto Socks on (very easy) the outer rear tires, truck into 4 wheel drive low, and just motored out of there like there was nothing there. Extremely impressed. Told my wife we should go back down and see how well we could get out without them but she wasn’t having any of that. i have since bought another pair in case I’m really in trouble. I highly recommend them.1.9KViews2likes0CommentsRe: Using Camper without Power
A few reply’s. We have a built in generator and I didn’t believe it would work without 12 V power. I may have to take another look at that as it might be wired directly to the battery for starting. We never used the generator as with 385 Watts of solar and 24 hours of sunlight the batteries were never challenged. I have a volt meter and some basic electrical equipment. The problem I had was the batteries indicated good but everything inside was dead. When I got to “civilization,” Dawson City I called Northwood for advice. They told me to check a small junction “box” and told me where to look but nothing was there. It turns out they had the right idea but the wrong location. We had 12 V power in the Arctic Ocean at Tuk, We lost it as we headed down. The Tuk campground has a two little sheds with 15 amp plugs so the people camping right next to them can get a little power. To go there you take the Dempster highway from near Dawson City Yukon to Inuvik NT. It is 458 miles of gravel road. Then you take the new all season gravel road to Tuktoyaktuk on the Arctic. That is another 86 miles. Then you do the whole thing again to get back. I guess the main point of the post is that even though power was out and nothing worked from water to the full wall slide it was still useable.532Views0likes0CommentsUsing Camper without Power
We were traveling from Tuktoyaktuk on the Arctic Ocean back down the Dempster we lost battery power in our AF1150. Shore power still worked but we did have to boondock at least once in Eagle Plains and of course traveling we had no power. So no water, slide wouldn’t operator, refrigerator wouldn’t operate, no fans, no heat, no lights on battery power. We used ice in the refrigerator and freezer sections and bought bottled water for drinking and flushing the toilet. The refrigerator did great and the freezer didn’t do badly with the ice (when we had shore power we would run the refrigerator at maximum cool that night so everything would be very cold when we took off in the morning). Didn’t need heat Of course lights were not a problem as it never got dark. It would have been nice to have a fan but we had modified our frameless windows to open much more so we did get decent air. Overall I was fairly pleased how usable the camper was in a pinch without power. We finally found the loose connection the caused the loss of battery power and are fully powered up.1.5KViews0likes8CommentsRVIA Certificate?
We are scheduled to go to a campground that is going to require an RVIA number. It is a county campground in Florida and it was very difficult to get a spot. I have never run into this before. Our Camper is an Arctic Fox and when I called Northwood they said they are not RVIA members and use Pacific West Associates to “certify” meeting standards. Has anybody run into this or have any experience with this? I’m not sure of I should just show up or try and ask them in advance.6.7KViews0likes26CommentsRe: Camping off the truck
If you remove your camper a lot one option is these: Snap pads The disadvantage is you will be a bit more likely to drag a jack going through ditches and stuff. ( Don’t ask me how I know about doing that in an AF1150) One thing we use is the orange “caps” for the “Lego”levelers. Little story. We had the camper sitting on the pads on a concrete driveway. It was backing up to line up the truck with the camper before raising up the camper. We have a flat cargo carrier in the back hitch (carry a screen room and an outdoor mat in it). My wife was watching but “zoned out” for a moment and I went to far. The carrier hit the rubber stops on the camper. The camper just slid an inch back on the Orange caps. No damage, nothing bent, and we raised it up and loaded it.901Views0likes0CommentsRe: DRW vs SRW safety, tire blowout
We had been running around in our DRW with the camper unloaded. Loaded up the camper and my wife commented the the passenger side rear tires were really bulging. Checked and the inner tire was flat. Unload the camper and replaced the inner tire, which had a nail in it, with the spare. I have no idea when during the two weeks that the camper was off the tire went flat but, short of checking the tire pressure, I have no idea how you would know.586Views0likes0CommentsRe: Slide out to non slide
I have an AF1150 with a full wall slide. Brother has an AF865 without a slide. I really like the 865 especially for a single person. However, for two people the slide makes a big difference as you can easily pass each other. In the 865 you are constantly getting in each other’s way. One other note about the 865. For cold weather camping there is no heat vent in the bed area and as a mid bath design the heat is slow to get to the bedroom because of the narrow passageway.756Views0likes0CommentsRe: Newbie Question on wi-fi
ccjack wrote: I am new to RVing and have a question on wi-fi. Our new TT came with a Winegard air 360+. My understanding is it is a HD TV antenna but also has wi-fi router capability. We would need to purchase an additional gaetway router that installs inside the RV for $300. My question is what does this do? The air360+ pulls a wifi signal from the campground (as an example - the campground would provide log in info?) and then the $300 router serves as a booster for the area around our individual TT? Can't you just use the campground wifi without a router? This is unrelated to any co-ax cable connectors on the outside of the TT, correct? The Winegard is not connected to any coax cable in the TT correct? I am a bit confused as to what we should buy or not. thanks. We have the Air360+ and the Gateway modem. The Gateway unit adds additional antennas for both wifi and cellular signals. Our experience is that: - TV reception is pretty good but do not expect it to compete with directional antennas. - WiFi is able to pull in signals our iPhones can not but most campground wifi isn’t very good. - We have been impressed with the ability to grab cell signals. As an example, we were at a harvest host farm who claimed they had not been able to get cell service but we were able to get AT&T. This has repeatedly been our experience. I attribute it to the multiple antennas and the rooftop location. Note that I believe the Gateway is only a cat4 modem so it is never supper fast. WiFi Ranger sells their Osprey unit to go with the Air360+ which can be obtained as cat6 or cat12 units so they may be much faster though I don’t know if the Osprey adds antennas like the Gateway does. Overall we have been pleased with the unit and it has given us data in a wide variety of place our phones have not been able to.1.4KViews0likes0Comments
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