The Jack antenna is the first one to work on our 2005 Airstream trailer. This antenna really works. We were at AlumaFlamingo 2014 talking to another Airstreamer. He was bragging on how great his Jack antenna works. Amazing reception, he told us. We had never had a working television antenna on our trailer. A quick visit to Camping World put a Jack antenna retrofit kit in our hands. We installed it and WOW! We get tv stations like other people do -- finally!
Installation was a breeze. We disconnected the coax cable from the Winegard antenna. We pulled two pins holding the Winegard batwing antenna on the two square lifting tubes. We placed the Jack antenna in position and inserted two retaining pins. Plugged the coax cable into the new antenna. That's it. When we turn the crank handle from inside the trailer, the Jack antenna goes up and down, just as the Winegard batwing antenna formerly did. There's a big difference, though. We get great reception and a lot of stations. And we still hardly watch television. ACC mens basketball is starting up before long - we'll see if we can find games.
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E17. Ham Radios and roof-top antennae
Tarheel® Lift and Lay roof-top antenna mount
This is a fantastic product for roof-top screwdriver antennas. We have a twelve-feet vertical ham radio antenna on our Airstream's roof. It is too tall to travel the highways, and we don't want to climb up to the roof to mount/dismount it for every trip. Voila! An electrically powered tilting system for the antenna, completely controllable from within the trailer. Down, the antenna lays in a rooftop cradle over the front of the trailer. Up, we have an antenna with a whip reaching 21 feet above ground into the air. Looks Cool, Works Great!
High Sierra® HS1800Pro® HF Antenna
This High Sierra motorized antenna is a high quality setup for high frequency (10m to 80m) radio transmit and receive on amateur radio bands. It tunes well and works very nicely for us. It is mounted on the Tarheel Lift and Lay mount. We've used it in this configuration since November 2008 without problems, and have reached hams in 30 European countries and Hawaii with it. Lots more info about this and some of the following items on our ham radio page
Yaesu® 857d HF/UHF/VHF transceiver
This is the most compact of the mobile all-band transceiver amateur radios, and happens also to be the least cost for the quality. The more expensive products from Icom are probably a little easier to use and certainly the Icom displays are esier to read. This radio connects me just
as well as the more expensive ones, and it sure fits in our rolling home very nicely.
An additional treat is receiving FM broadcast so we can listen to CBC or NPR over breakfast without getting up and tuning the Airstream's stereo. No biggie, but nice. Even better, we can pick up all ten of the NOAA weather band stations on this radio. This 857d has a very small footprint and works great for us. For more info on our ham radio equipment and uses, see our ham radio page
Kenwood® TM-D710a UHF/VHF transceiver
This APRS (automatic packet radio system, or automatic position reporting system) radio is in our truck. It is a great dual band vhf/uhf transceiver for mobile use, and it works much better for mobile use on these bands than the Yaesu 857. The Kenwood's APRS feature transmits our position data so you can look for us on the internet here. You'll see our last reported physical location with lat and long coordinates.
We added a Kenwood® TM-V71 transceiver in the trailer in 2010 to free the Yaesu 857 to HF uses only. The TM-V71 transceiver also monitors for NOAA weather alerts and, with its excellent roof-top 1/4 wave 2m antenna, avoids the problems we had with a small portable weather radio which had no external antenna.
Dec 2015 the Kenwood TM-D710a lost sensitivity on the "B" side. Despite it's age (eight years) we sent it to Kenwood's repair facility and they replaced the filters for free and shipped it back to us the same day they received it. We decided to move the smaller TM-V71 into the truck and put the TM-D710a in the trailer. Our location on GPS maps (using APRS - automatic packet reporting system) now may be updated when we move the trailer.
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E15. Yamaha® portable generator, more info than you thought you'd find?
1kw 110vac gas-powered , 27 pounds of power. It's quiet, and a gas sipper. We wondered if we should haul one or two 2,000 watt generators. They, or a 3,000 watt unit would power everything we have. And we could use only one of the two 2,000s when we didn't need so much.
Folks, it's really simple -- if you can get by without having to run your roof air conditioner or your microwave, then you may not need any generator larger than a 1,000 watt (1 KW). A 1 KW generator is the lightest, smallest, and most economical to buy and operate. It will work for you IF your charge converter doesn't require over 1,000 watts. We found a good deal on a Yamaha EF1000iS. You can see good information on these at this web site.
The generator can handle the charge converter if nothing else is on AC power. We set our fridge on gas-only while connecting the trailer to the generator. Once the generator picks up the load we could turn the fridge back to automatic (although we don't -- we leave the fridge on propane when using the generator) as well as plug in the laptops or anything else we want.
We decided this is worth the little bit of care, for avoiding the weight and fuel consumption and cargo space of the larger generators. Why would we need to make our own power for air conditioning? Why would we want to heft a 50 pound generator when we could be swinging a 28 pound one instead? Our house has wheels so we can relocate if we need to. We bought the 1,000 watt (1 kw) generator in 2006 and would do the same again.
What about Honda vs Yamaha generators? Sure, they both make similar-sized units. They're both quiet and weigh the same. They both have great reputations. They displace the same amount of space in the truck. Two differences we've encountered in the first nine years of use: the Yamahas are blue instead of red, and there are fewer authorized or advertising Yamaha generator service centers than Honda ones. We didn't find a Yamaha service center the two times we took ours in for service. We took it to a lawn equipment place and asked if they could work on it. They did great and gave us good recommendations for maintaining it.
One other thing to consider, if your're shopping for a generator: be sure you're comparing Fuji apples to Fuji apples. The generator we, and almost all our RV friends, use is an inverter-type portable generator. This means it makes "clean" power like your trailer's electronics must have. The generator has this designation, "iS" in it's name. You can buy much less expensive stuff, and generators are no exception -- you get what you pay for. And you may pay dearly with damaged integrated circuit control boards (fridge, microwave, water heater, for example) if you use a low quality generator to feed your trailer.
The 1kw generator is small and lightweight, easy for us to handle. It's just the right size for re-charging our batteries if we need. Or we can maintain as many as four trailers on minimal 120vac, if they run their fridges and heat on gas. We store it in the truck's bed near the tailgate. We'll try to keep it there as much as we can. As a friend stated earlier this summer, we want to be generator snobs, eschewing noisy and smelly generator use for battery conservation and solar charging instead.
After more than eight years, we have found the generator a great relief sometimes and sometimes a convenience. We've repaired tires twice at roadside, using the generator to power the 110vac air compressor. We've loaned it to friends to recharge their trailer's batteries. And we've recharged our batteries a few times when dry-camping under heavy tree canopy or in less than ideal solar conditions. Since replacing the two golf-cart batteries with four (Mar 2012), we haven't needed the generator except in winter. Once, though, we did lend it to a motorhome friend to keep her powered up one week while we were all dry-camping in Sun Valley ID.
If you aren't reasonably careful to run your generator at least once monthly and either run only ethanol-free gas or keep StaBil® or SeaFoam® in the fuel, your generator might not respond when you crank on it. This happened to us a few years ago, cost us $60 to have the carburetor cleaned out from gummed fuel, the gas tank cleaned out, and the plug cleaned. Everything is hunky-dory again. We're running one-hour load tests monthly now and switched in 2014 to ethanol-free gas. Our generator really does start easier with the better gas. We still run it monthly for 3/4 to 1 hour under load.
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E16. Chevrolet Silverado 2500 HD and associated stuff:
Okay, not exactly a home improvement project, but our truck does improve our Airstream some, and suffers it's own improvements somewhat regularly. 4X4, 8.1L gas, Allison 1000 transmission, 3.73 diff, extended cab, short bed, 45 gallon tank (thanks to Transfer Flow and Tom's 4 Wheel in Lexington NC for the tank change.) This is our Cowboy Cadillac, a great ride and capable tow vehicle. We are asked very frequently if we wouldn't rather a diesel engine. We consciously and carefully selected a gas-powered truck. The numbers just didn't add up, for us, for the diesel's higher first cost and fuel and maintenance. Twelve years and over 187,000 miles have, so far, proven us correct. We don't need more power, more noise, more smell, more maintenance. Loping along at 1,500 rpm (at 60 miles per hour towing in 6th gear) seems to promote long engine life, even for a gas engine.
Two unscheduled problems in the entire nine-year use: an oil cooler leak repaired under warranty; and a mass air flow sensor alarm. The latter just happened March 2012 and seems to have been caused by dirty MAF sensor. We bought a can of MAF sensor spray cleaner, used it, and cleared the problem. Don't over-oil your K&N air filter. No other problems. What a great truck! It has never stopped doing what we asked, never failed to start or, more importantly, to stop.
Our 100,000 mile service was even bigger than we expected and we thought we had big expectations. We spent $4,000 on our wonderful lifestyle hauler, the big red truck. A few suspension parts, four cooling lines (engine and transmission oil coolers), all the fluids, new plugs and wires (did you know how much more expensive these are than 45 years ago? like ten times more, at least!!!). Anyway, our truck is like new and we hope will go another five or six years at least. As some friends recently commented, the truck is paid for and this service cost is far less than cost of replacing our truck.
A nice surprise -- the mechanic said at 100,000 miles our brakes had plenty of life remaining. Remember how long brakes lasted when we were kids? The brakes had started pulsing pretty badly, indicating a likelihood of warped rotor. We finally replaced the front brakes pads and rotors at 140,000 miles. Everything's smooth again.
At 190,000 we ordered and installed a set of Bilstein 4600 shocks on the truck. They were super easy to install using my FIL's air wrench. Didn't need to jack up the truck to get to these but installation was eased by lifting a corner of the frame at a time while installing that shock - easier than trying to compress the new shocks. A friend had scoffed at our buying shocks for this truck saying, "No one needs to do this, shocks last forever." He might have been 75% correct on our truck - one of the four OEM shocks was completely worthless, the other three seemed okay. We replaced all four and are good to go another 190,000 miles.
At 200,000 we replaced the plugs, wires, mass air flow sensor, and shift lever on the steering column. The latter two were bad, the former two were by service dept recommendation. The maf had been throwing lean and Oxy sensor codes awhile. Dealer tested it and found circuit problems in the maf itself. Replaced 6,000 miles ago and zero codes since. Love my truck!
ARE® hard tonneau cover with exact color match to GM factory color
People often ask if we wouldn't rather have a camper shell instead of a tonneau cover. Considerations: (1) the tonneau cover allows full field of vision across the rear of the truck; (2) the tonneau cover raises well to allow access to things even at the front of the bed; (3) the tonneau cover looks darned sharp on our truck; (4) we don't want any more stuff than we can fit under the tonneau cover. The ARE tonneau cover has served really well, although the clear coat has started to peel in a few places. Disappointing and a little surprising.
UPDATE: Dec 2016 we contacted ARE about the clear coat on our tonneau cover. They initially declined to cover it under warranty, claiming we had waited too long before notifying them. We responded that their warranty doesn't provide any such limitations on timely notification, and we hadn't realized how badly it was going. We worked out a suitable settlement, they shipped it out and back and refinished it. The color doesn't match any more but it looks sharp and will hopefully last the life of the truck.
UPDATE: Mar 2017 we replaced both the gas struts for the tonneau cover. One had failed and it just wouldn't work with only one. Dec 2017 we replaced the balls studs for both struts lower connections. One had failed and we were pleased the replacement was straightforward and effective. See our brief article on replacing the gas strut's ball stud at our blog page here
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TST® tire pressure monitoring system, truck and trailer tires
Nothing is guaranteed, but we like to improve our chances when we can. If we receive notification of a low-pressure tire, we might stave off severe damage to that tire and then to the trailer too. A failed tire, at highway speeds, turns into a rotating flapping demon to wallow out your trailer's wheel wells and destroy whatever systems the flapping tread can reach.
So far, we've had low tire pressure alerts due to a loose sensor on the valve stem, and twice due to a tire puncture with slow leak. You might catch the pressure reductions through conscientious monitoring at rest stops and before every towing day. And you might not. Why take a chance, when a $400 system can watch all four tires continuously and might avert $2,000 or more damage to your trailer?
The TST® tire monitoring is very compact, battery-operated, and easy to use. We like the display of both pressure and temperature for each tire.
Garmin® NUVI® 650 GPS,
"Lucy", who is correct over 50% of the time, provides us a view of streets so we can see turns ahead. Lucy is now five years old, does not do blue tooth or FM alerts, doesn't know speed limits. Doesn't seem to have much memory capacity. Battery is awful after five years, lasts only five minutes at most if not plugged into dc power. But she helps a lot most of the time and sometimes really goofs up.
And when she goofs, she can really goof us up. Fortunately we've learned the proper amount of skepticism for her recommended routes and we double check her trip plan before we commit. This is a pretty realistic relationship -- we don't expect too much and she rarely surprises.
Tailgate Assist
We installed a neat gizmo on our tailgate. Shopping at a 4Wheel Parts store we found the Dee Zee 
DZ43100 Tailgate Assist. (The product number will vary to correspond to your truck model and year) This allows us to unlatch the tailgate and let it drop freely -- it is nicely slowed by the gas shock. It doesn't help so much with lifting it, but is a nice aid in lowering it.
Coleman® air compressor, 2 gallon 110vac
This air compressor is noisy and doesn't pump truck or trailer tires quickly. No more often than we need it we are glad to give it the little space it requires. Just pull up a seat and plan to spend several minutes to add 15 pounds pressure to a tire.
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E18. Fridge Boiler Control by ARPRV
Spring 2017 we read in Escapees Magazine about a product, the ARPrv, designed to improve the life and safety of our RV's absorption refrigerator. It's designed for Dometic or Norcold propane/electric refrigerators. We'd considered whether to add a cabinet automatic extinguisher as seen on Mac the Fire Guy's web pages and discussed in Air Forums. After finding this automatic boiler temperature control we don't feel any need to protect the fridge chase from fire. We hope th ARP will help protect our fridge from overheat conditions caused by operating while out of level.
Installation took Jim a couple of hours. The included directions were very clear and tech help was excellent. Jim contacted the inventors/sellers with a question on installation and they answered very promptly with helpful information. The installation looks neat and doesn't interfere with normal operation. Jim elected to install the control and display panel in the fridge outside compartment. We could have placed it inside the cabin instead and had one more cool info source here. Instead he can go outside, push a button, and marvel at reading whatever the boiler temperature is. Some people are easily amused. . . The big deal is this - most of us know someone who's lost their fridge's operation from boiler overheating. Our Norcold and Dometic fridges are designed for long lasting service. Many old Servel (Dometic) fridges have lasted 75 years and more. These are typically installed in buildngs, not RVs. Our RV fridges can be severely tested by unlevel conditions. This control watches for hazardous overheating and protects your fridge.
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E19. Miscellaneous Items
These miscellaneous items we associate with our full-timing experience but they just don't seem like enhancements to the camper. They are each one improvements to the tow vehicle or another aspect instead. These have each, so far, been far better than we could have expected. I mean, we did research them before purchasing but sometimes you just don't know if things will work out, you know? (e.g., see failures, below) We thought we might eventually describe these features in some fashion. Until then, they seemed to fit here better than any other place.
We now use a Blueline® system available, among other places, at Camping World. We have two ten foot sections with a slide-on coupler and a slide-on connection to the ell which threads into any of four different sizes of sewer dump connections. Not very expensive and worth every nickel. Camping World occasionally has a special deal for this BlueLine kit like we use so we replace hoses and fittings, throw away the four year-old set. Cheap insurance.
Air horns by Kleinn®
After friend Tom S showed us his nifty setup under his Toyota, we finally decided this was a highway safety feature we could implement. We added a two-trumpet Kleinn® system with a selector switch on the dash. We can select between city horns (the factory-installed Fiamme electric horns) and the country horn (the new air horns.) The Kleinn package included a very light duty compressor which didn't last long because of a leaking pressure switch on the air tank. We bought a 100% duty factor compressor and a new pressure switch. Good so far after three more years.
Trailer Mud Flaps by Jim
Two years after Steve R showed us his Airstream mud flaps, we stumbled upon an inexpensive big truck mudflap on our way to Albuquerque. Cut in two, mounted to a pair of 1" aluminum angle, and mounted at the back of each wheel well. Looks sharp and helps keep the back of the trailer clean.
Please email us if you're interested in source or experiences information on any of these "undescribed" features.
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Go to What About The Failures?
DZ43100 Tailgate Assist.
