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Forum
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RE: GPS tracker for trailers?
Air tags are easy as pie for thieves to find as any iphone tells you if there's a tracker filling you that's not registered to your account, Android users can find out the same info with a simple download.
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afidel
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05/08/23 08:41pm |
Travel Trailers
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RE: 12v? 24v? 36...48v????
Personally I'd run the 12V stepdown converter into a 12V battery, either lithium or SLA. That way peak loads for the slide motors and compressor motor get taken up by the 12V battery and the 12V converter can just top that off. I know there are folks that team a couple of 12V stepdowns together to supply the loads, but it has to be much more stressful on the components in them than if there was a decent pool of ampacity there. Since you aren't actually using it for storage capacity a 50Ah 100A LiFePO4 would work great and they're like $160.
The big advantage of 48V is you can use a much cheaper MPPT controller since they're basically priced on output amps and 48V is 4x lower amps for the same watts. Wiring costs are also much lower since you get to drop down to wire gauges which are commonly available instead of double 0 or triple 0 cables.
but thats like I said, keep the battery side all 12 volt and use a MPPT charger (more expensive by the way not cheeper) and stack the panels to 24v. you could probably spend a little more and get one that will handle a 48 volt input, but I don't know if it would be worth it for most people in a rv setting. the one problem you do run into with a all series run is shading.. in a home system where you have solar out in the open it isnt an issue, but for a lot of camping it is. I guess you would have to look at the price increase to a 48v input MPPT VS the upgraded wire size for the 24V setup. wiring is going to be an issue anyway you look at it with the size he wants to run so it will have to be resized.
edit, I did look at my brand and a MPPT charge that wil handle a 48V input is only 160.00 more canadian (one size biger) so it will be tight as to which way is cheeper, but I would go that way myself four 24V panels in a 48V series / parallel set up get the smaller wire size and you get some protection from shading.
What I was saying is that a 30A MPPT can put ~1,500W into a 48V system, to accomplish the same with a 12V battery system requires a 120A MPPT controller which are 3-4x the cost and several times the size and mass.
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afidel
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03/09/23 09:28am |
Tech Issues
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RE: 12v? 24v? 36...48v????
Personally I'd run the 12V stepdown converter into a 12V battery, either lithium or SLA. That way peak loads for the slide motors and compressor motor get taken up by the 12V battery and the 12V converter can just top that off. I know there are folks that team a couple of 12V stepdowns together to supply the loads, but it has to be much more stressful on the components in them than if there was a decent pool of ampacity there. Since you aren't actually using it for storage capacity a 50Ah 100A LiFePO4 would work great and they're like $160.
The big advantage of 48V is you can use a much cheaper MPPT controller since they're basically priced on output amps and 48V is 4x lower amps for the same watts. Wiring costs are also much lower since you get to drop down to wire gauges which are commonly available instead of double 0 or triple 0 cables.
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afidel
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03/08/23 01:39pm |
Tech Issues
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RE: Adding Second A/C to 50 Amp TT
Before investing in a second AC I'd tear apart the ducts, look for missing tape, disconnected hose segments, etc. There's a very good chance your AC can keep things cool if it's properly installed, is just probably not installed correctly. A 20' cheap boroscope will allow you check to see if the vent is cut, kinked, or otherwise damaged.
In short you probably don't need to brute force your cooling with a second AC, you probably just need to use the cold your current AC can produce more efficiently by fixing the piss poor assembly job done at the RV factory.
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afidel
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02/09/23 11:07pm |
Travel Trailers
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RE: Wireless Camera Relay
How big is your trailer? Mine is 34' and I have a full bed crew cab and I have no issue with the AMTIFO camera I bought off Amazon for $140. It comes with everything you need to wire it on an unprepared trailer or one with the Furion prewire system.
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afidel
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01/27/23 04:03pm |
Technology Corner
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RE: Snoozy Resurrection
Highly unlikely there will be another model, molds are very, very expensive to make and the business was not really viable as it was. Scamps sold in WAY higher volume and the only way they got new molds was business insurance when the plant burned.
As far as an awning, you should be able to add the type the camper vans use for the rear.
For morning coffee just bring a camp stove, either backpacker style or Coleman style with a 1 pound cylinder. If you have a rare need for heat at an overnight stop a Mr. Buddy Big Buddy heater would be more than enough even in the coldest of weather. Though both assume you're not scared of combustible gas.
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afidel
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12/27/22 11:56am |
Travel Trailers
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RE: Directv ??? what are they doing???
The satellite version of DirecTV is a "dead man walking". If Starlink doesn't kill it, expanding 5G cell phone service. Both offer TWO WAY communication, something DirectTV can not.
Don’t hold your breath that 5G is a solution… it needs an antenna every mile for coverage which is possible in a large city but you can forget it in rural areas.
5G is just a name for a collection of encoding methods and software stacks, carriers can be everything from 600MHz which will cover dozens of miles to 30GHz which requires an antenna every few hundred feet. It's about 10% more efficient than 4G and has lower latency, plus it allows providers to stitch together many more pieces of separate spectrum. Also one of the big advantages of carrier aggregation for rural use cases is that it can upload on lower frequencies where the low power radio in your phone can cover distance more easily while putting downlink on higher frequencies where the more powerful radios from the cell tower might still be able to talk at your phone. Other than cost and currently some battery drain issues there's no real downside to going 5g. That said much of the early hype was vastly overblown because some of the biggest wow moments for 5g were the blistering speeds that mmWave (20-30GHz) allows, but at cost of poor coverage, building penetration, and insanely high buildout costs. All of that is why the only time most people will ever use it is at a sporting arena or similar venue where the providers expect very, very high total bandwidth usage in a small area and where the limited range is actually a virtue because it allows for lots of spectrum reuse.
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afidel
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12/11/22 01:28am |
Technology Corner
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RE: How to stay warm in cold weather.
well made rigs actually have triple pane glass all around, remember your vents loose a lot of heat so put vent pillows in the vent, if on electric a ceramic heater helps a lot. There are ways of making heat with ceramic pots but would not entertain that thought due to fire hazards. Put bubble wrap on windows or better is the foil bubble wrap. Make sure all seals are good to keep heat in and cold out. Some rigs have insulated basements and covered bottoms so air infiltration is low.
One thing I've noticed is that the snow melts fastest where the AC vents are. I've been meaning to buy some insulated vent plugs, I've already got pillows for the 14x14 air vents an Reflectix for the windows which helps a ton.
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afidel
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12/06/22 05:42pm |
General RVing Issues
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RE: RV park "STANDARDS"
Lemonis does nothing to assure quality at any of his businesses as far as I can see. Crappy products, bad service, overpriced, no oversight. Just my opinion. As long as people pay their bills, he won’t fix it.
Lemonis has nothing to do with the quality of RV Parks.
The Good Sam RV Park directory is nothing but a directory. While in the beginning it was advertising as a way to "guarantee" a good park, it has not done that in years.
It is like using AAA guidebooks to find a hotel - it gives ratings, but those ratings have no substance behind them. No one from Good Sam (or AAA) is going around evaluating the facilities in the directory.
When choosing an RV Park, look at reviews, check out satelite views and don't assume anything based on what it calls itself. An RV resort is no different than an RV park - either one can have great ammenities and sites and service; either one can have absolutely nothing.
KOA actually does have definitions and requirements for Journey/Holiday/Resort and if you call to complain about a resort not having amenities claimed the campground has to respond to corporate with an explanation and a timeline for the issue to be resolved. Campgrounds that get lots of complaints can get kicked out of the KOA system, I've seen it happen. Jellystone is similar, though they're a bit more skewed towards the campground owner in that I've read many reports of it taking quite a few years for a campground to have the Jellystone name removed.
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afidel
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11/28/22 07:58pm |
RV Parks, Campgrounds and Attractions
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RE: UP with hookups
Pictured Rocks RV park in Christmas MI, just outside Munising is an excellent park. While it's a commercial park the sites are not right on top of one another. It's only a few years old and the young couple who run it are extremely friendly. We've stayed there twice and had an excellent time both stays. If you really want to be isolated site #5 has trees on both sides. Munising tourist park is great but hard to get reservations for and the sites on the water are VERY close together.
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afidel
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11/14/22 08:10pm |
RV Parks, Campgrounds and Attractions
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RE: Camping at 27 degrees.
JMO with only a few nights experience in the 30s but RVs are not good places to be in cold weather. Out of the factory they are not made for it.
Cold air leaks in around slides. Walls are thin. Glass is single pane & radiates the cold. Without some serious post construction mods they are simply no up to dealing with the cold.
You can put up a good fight against cold but it will take alot of electricity & alot of propane.
Point the thing south & don't stop until you no longer see bridge freezing before road warnings or no snow blowers outside of Lowes or Home Depot.
Been using a trailer as a home office for going on 3 years now in NE Ohio, put some Reflectix in the windows and vent covers in the vents is the only mod I've made. It works just fine and when I was using a combination of propane and one electric heater I was going through a 20 pound bottle a week on average, now that I've upgraded my electric at home to 50A and run 3x electric heaters I barely use any propane. The one caveat is that the water system is winterized and the temp is allowed to go down to 45 when I'm not actively using the trailer, I've got enough foodstuff in that I don't want it to freeze and it takes too long for the electric heat to recover if it gets too cold.
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afidel
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11/14/22 12:42pm |
General RVing Issues
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RE: traction tracks
When I was shopping one of the things that convinced me was one person who used them when they first got them to help the UPS truck that delivered then get unstuck from the mud that the driver had managed to put himself in and they worked and were undamaged, a UPS truck is similar to an RV in weight.
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afidel
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11/11/22 09:13pm |
General RVing Issues
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RE: Hard tasting water
We do the generic Camco filter, if that's insufficient then we carry a Britta pitcher, if that's not enough we carry 5 gallons of emergency water in a container and can use that until we can get to better water, bottled water, or a better filter system (most likely we'd grab a backpacking filter and fill the Nalgene bottles we always have with us). If it was for 4 months I'd invest in a 3 stage filtering system and put it before the intake.
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afidel
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11/08/22 07:35pm |
Travel Trailers
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RE: Data Caps Starlink
My kids managed to use >100GB in one day, this week, the last week we've used 378GB risk and that wasn't a particularly big week, during the pandemic I think our highest month was 3.5TB. We're fortunate enough to have uncapped cable, but I'm sure once it's just the wife and I on the road the Starlink speeds will be fine, just need enough to stream one show or do one video conference.
That is truly an amazing amount of data! I used to build large chunks of the Internet and huge data centers and you are passing more data than some of the data centers used... Your home usage is definitely not the use case for Starlink! Any chance you have looked at your traffic flows to make sure that is all you and not someone who has hacked some of your machines?
Yup, I know where the data is going, my router has breakdowns by protocol and destination and it's all legitimate traffic. Game updates, twitch streaming, etc.
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afidel
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11/08/22 07:21am |
Technology Corner
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RE: Data Caps Starlink
Got the notification and went and looked at my traffic statistics on my home router (FIOS). With two adults working from home, two kids watching loads of videos/gaming, and I host some gaming servers like Minecraft, we burned around 100GB last week. It sounds like someone would need to be a huge data hog to reach the point they get de-prioritized. From a quality of service standpoint, it essentially moves the user temporarily from permanent to RV service. I have run two Starlink antennas side by side, one permanent and one RV, my experience was that both were very useable (not as good as fiber but better than cellular data). On average, the RV unit tested out at about 1/2 the download bandwidth and about 2/3 the upload bandwidth of a permanent Starlink installation.
My kids managed to use >100GB in one day, this week, the last week we've used 378GB risk and that wasn't a particularly big week, during the pandemic I think our highest month was 3.5TB. We're fortunate enough to have uncapped cable, but I'm sure once it's just the wife and I on the road the Starlink speeds will be fine, just need enough to stream one show or do one video conference.
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afidel
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11/07/22 06:15pm |
Technology Corner
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RE: New to traveling
I did exactly what you're looking to do about 6 years ago. I bought a 181BH that I was planning originally to tow with a minivan (he it was "rated" to pull 3,600 and the trailer was only 3,100), didn't take but driving home to realize I needed a better tow vehicle. Ultimately ended up picking up a very lightly used (18 month, 15k mile) work truck from my signature. The truck was $30k, the trailer $12.5k. Today I could sell that truck for what I bought it for and the same trailer model lists for $20-25k new. What I'm trying to say is that to stay in your budget you're going to have to shop very wisely for both truck and trailer. Oh, and you don't need a palace, we did 5k miles in 3 weeks with 5 of us in an 18' bunkhouse with my niece sleeping on the dinette.
If I had to do it over I'd buy a 3500 SRW, but finding just the truck in your price range would be very tough.
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afidel
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10/27/22 12:34am |
Travel Trailers
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RE: GMC Sierra EV
1300 pounds of maximum payload (the Denali will be 1100 or less) means it's of very little use as an actual truck. I'm sure it will be fine as a status symbol commuter vehicle that sometimes pulls a boat but I think we're a major redesign away from useful EV trucks.
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afidel
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10/22/22 10:34am |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: VPN's again
Proton VPN, very good policy backed by law and I've been able to use it to stream content from around the world. Pricing is very reasonable ($10/month on a month to month basis, down to $5/month with a 2 year payment).
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afidel
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10/18/22 08:41pm |
Technology Corner
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RE: Shopping new tires - is my shop confused or am I?
You can get Kenda Klevar AT2 in that size for under $200. 3 peak snow rated, fairly aggressive pattern, but still have low road noise and a 50k mile warranty. The only downside I've seen is that the tread is big enough that it likes to pick up 57 stones from my driveway and stick in the tread until I get 1-2 houses down the road and then flying into the wheel well.
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afidel
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10/13/22 10:40pm |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: RV Cell booster
Omnidirectional is never going to give you as much of a gain as a directional, it's physics since you're limited on transmit power. You can get omnis up to about 6dB which isn't nothing, but yagis can be up to about 24dB which a massive difference since dB is logarithmic (powers of 10).
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afidel
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10/05/22 07:56pm |
Technology Corner
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