tbutler

We have a 2004 Monaco Windsor. I don't have any answers for you. I assume you have consulted the manual and can't find enough information there to be helpful. I'll be watching the ideas that come in on this one because I'm sure to have a similar question, just a matter of time. One suggestion might be to contact a Monaco dealer and see if they have an inside number that might get you through to the last lone technician on the job at Monaco. Otherwise, I would guess that the answer might be to go to a dealer who has had experience with Monaco coaches and can diagnose the problem from his experience. I was able to get Monaco parts from a dealer recently. They had battery cut-off relays in stock. So some parts are still out there in the system. Since the cut-off relays have failed for me fairly frequently I got two. That should last me for four or five years.

Hello Roodriver, We are a pair of science teachers as well. I am Tom and my wife is Louise. If you haven't found us yet, we are currently featured on the Meet a Member section under the Join FMCA menu on the main board. Like you, we enjoy the back roads. We've made several runs across US 2 in ND and Montana. We're driving a 2004 Monaco Windsor. Our summers are usually spent traveling. This summer our goal is Newfoundland. Since we have a daughter and her family on the west coast that means a cross country drive is in the offing. We will leave Texas the end of April and head to Florida to try to catch a launch of the Shuttle, STS 125 and/or STS 127. Then Kentucky and a visit to my brother and his wife. From there Missouri to see family and doctors. We are planning a short trip with our 2 oldest grandsons. After we return them to their parents we'll set sail for Newfoundland. If you are going to be anywhere along that route this summer drop me a line. Perhaps we can sit down and solve the educational problems of the nation over a glass of wine (or 2).

We installed a system by Brakemaster on our coach, a 1994 Monaco Dynasty diesel, in 2002 when we went to towing four wheels down. The system is powered by air from the air brakes of the coach which operates a cylinder to actuate the brake pedal in the toad. As such, the system is strictly proportional. The harder I hit the brakes on the coach, the greater the pressure on the brakes in the toad. Our Trialblazer toad is now going on 7 years old and I just replaced the front brakes last spring (at 6 years old). The Brakemaster system certainly isn't causing excessive wear on the car brakes. A small cylinder installed under the hood provides break-away stopping for the toad. Hook-up involves attaching the actuator pedal for the brake, attaching an air hose from coach to toad. This hose also has an electric connection that indicates when the brake is active and also if the hose is attached or not. The indicator light for this is installed on the drivers panel on the left side near the transmission information panel. I wouldn't have a system that didn't have some kind of indicator to indicate proper operation. The final piece is simply a cable from the coach hitch to the plug that activates the break-away system to engage the brake on the toad. If the two vehicles are separated the cable pulls the plug and the brake on the toad engages and stays engaged. It would be possible to install the electric wire for the status light in the wiring system from coach to toad if desired. Unlike the brake in a box, this system will not activate if I am using the engine brake while descending a steep incline. I prefer this as there is no need for extra braking on a routine descent and the toad brakes will be cool as are the coach brakes if needed for extra stopping power. We had no difficulty moving this from the original coach to our present coach, a 2004 Monaco Windsor. It took the staff at Dixie RV Superstores in Louisiana less than two hours to do the whole job. We really haven't had a hitch since installing this system. My wife and I can rip the toad off the motor home in under 10 minutes even if we have the Coastline Cover Tow Car Shield on the Trailblazer. I don't know how this system compares to the US Gear system so popular above. Guess I'll have to look at that if a change is ever necessary.

We have a 2004 Monaco Windsor. Our leveling system uses the suspension air bags for all leveling. The controller is an HWH system. Automatic leveling works fine and the coach is quickly leveled after bleeding off all the air in the bags after travel. As temperature varies the bags with more air will rise more than bags with less air. As a result, the coach will become out of level. The HWH system monitors this and periodically makes corrections. What we notice is that the leveling system will go on occasional periods of inflating and deflating the air bags. It seems to over-inflate and then dump at the next check. Sometimes it will dump and then immediately inflate again. At other times we go days with no noticeable adjustment. I haven't had anyone complain to us yet but the exhausting process when dumping air from the bags is a very noisy hissing. I would hate to be parked next to us trying to sleep when the air is dumped from the system. Is there a way to stop or reduce this cycling from inflating to deflating and the accompanying noise. If this is normal for the system, is there a way to muffle the exhausting air? Even if there were a temporary way to do this, it could be workable for long term parking. It is our long term neighbors that I worry most about. I welcome all ideas.

A friend of ours always kept his black water tank flush hose hooked up to the water faucet when parked for an extended time. As is standard practice, the black tank was kept closed except to dump as it neared full. One time the water was shut off in the park. Park personnel being helpful came around and shut off the water at each of the affected coaches before the water was shut off. Our friend was not home. He wasn't at home either when they returned to turn on the water. Evidently the person who turned the water back on was different than the person who turned it off or they simply didn't remember that only one hose was on. They turned on both hoses. Since the flush hose puts water into the black water tank under pressure, there is nowhere for the water to go but up. Our friend came home to find the black water tank overflowing through the toilet. Needless to say they had some repairs to do. The moral of this story is to always disconnect the flush hose from the faucet and the black water tank. No mistakes this way!

We had a flat tire on the outside rear when at the FMCA Convention in St. Paul last year. I had the flat repaired on site and then replaced the worn tire at the local Wingfoot (Goodyear) dealer. The best I could do was to get tires about a year and a half old. So I took them (a matched pair). Two years earlier we had a blow out on the drivers front tire at highway speeds. The tire that blew had been in service for three years. Besides destroying the wheel the blown tire took the exhaust pipe off the generator and did some minor damage to the coach exterior right by the wheel. I was able to keep the coach on the highway and get it to the shoulder. Thank goodness no other vehicle was in our vicinity. The blown tire did pull me completely into the passing lane before I could get control to bring the coach back to the right shoulder. If my wife had been driving I'm not sure that she would have been able to control the coach. A driving safety course at the FMCA Convention in Redmond in 2004 was instrumental in preparing me to cope with this emergency. I heartily recommend that course when you next attend FMCA. We had been having a great deal of trouble with that pair of tires as they caused excessive vibration. A Wingfoot tire shop in California identified the problem as being out of round. As a result, I replaced both front tires and made sure that they were mounted as steer tires. The difference as explained to me is that the steer tires should be inflated to seat the bead with the tire in the horizontal position. This ensures that the wheel is centered in the tire properly. If the tires are in the vertical position the wheel will seat lower in the center of the tire as it stands. When you drive it, it will vibrate up and down as it rotates. In addition, tires are slightly out of round when manufactured. So are the wheels! Now when I have new tires mounted, they are tested for round after mounting. If they are not within .006 inches of round, they are removed and rotated on the rim to ensure that they come within this standard. I had to personally supervise this at the shop in St. Paul. They initially mounted the tires vertically and when I called them on it they corrected it. After that I watched them like a hawk, checking the instrument as the tires were tested for round. At one point I had to face down the shop supervisor who wanted me to leave the shop. I told him that I would be glad to be accompanied while in the shop if he wanted to do that but that the actions that I had seen up to that point indicated that I needed to be personally supervising this job. He walked away and left me to continue working with the installer. I have started replacing the front tires on the motor home every 2 years. The old front tires go on the rear axle and the oldest pair on the rear come off and are scrapped. Using this system, the oldest tires on the coach will be six years old when they are removed not counting their initial age when purchased. Everything I have seen and read indicates 7 years for tire age before retirement. The oldest tires are on the duals in the rear where a flat is less an emergency. Besides the advantage of keeping fresh tires on the front of the motor home, this offers the advantage of not having to put out $3000+ for a complete set of new tires in one purchase. I check tire pressure every morning before the sun hits the tires when we are driving and monitor tire temperature by feel at every stop. I purchased and installed a full Pressure Pro system for the motor home and the toad at the St. Paul Convention. It is very reassuring to have a monitoring system to alert me to any changes in pressure while driving. The only alarm so far occurred on a very hot day (100+) when we ended up in stop and go traffic after extended highway travel from a cool mountain start. The tires on the sunny side of the coach (outside rear and steer tire) exceeded the Pressure Pro factory set limits for high pressure and the alarm sounded. There was no missing the alarm, it was plenty loud. I could dismiss it but it would return after a short interval. It was somewhat distracting when driving in heavy traffic. Since tire pressure had been set correctly at the beginning of the drive I knew this was not an emergency and was not worried about tire failure. It did take some explaining to my wife as to why this was OK. As soon as we cleared the traffic and were moving again, the tires cooled and the alarm didn't sound again. We occasionally will have one sensor on the toad drop out. I have the monitor mounted on the outside wall on the drivers side of the coach. The tire that drops out is the rear tire on the opposite side of the toad. I'm sure that an antenna extension would solve this problem. Since it is intermittent I haven't resorted to the antenna boost. I do find a few pounds difference between the Pressure Pro monitors and my tire gauges. Like my wife says, "A man with a watch always knows what time it is. A man with two watches never knows what time it is." I always set tire pressure by the lowest reading gauge and allow 10% above the recommended tire pressure for the weight being carried. I thought about purchasing a set of tire monitors for a number of years. It took the above events to finally convince me that I couldn't afford not to have them. Considering cost, peace of mind and safety, tire pressure monitors are an excellent investment. The Pressure Pro system is easy to use and is completely portable if/when we ever change coaches. In addition, I can move the monitor from the coach to the toad to monitor tire pressure there when we are out for a day trip. When I check tire pressure manually it doesn't reset the pressure setting unless it is off the stem more than a minute so it is no different than taking a regular cap off the stem. If I adjust tire pressure the new pressure setting is accepted after one minute off the valve stem. It usually takes me that long or longer to adjust the pressure so this is convenient also. I have not replaced the short rubber stems on the toad and they work quite satisfactorily. If the toad had long rubber stems I would replace them.

We have a solar panel on the roof of our 2004 Monaco Windsor. It came factory installed so I can't comment on installation and connection issues other than to go out and scratch my head looking at the wiring. It is integrated into the circuitry of the coach and contributes to the 12V system. I would guess that it helps to keep the house batteries charged while we are driving. Monaco separated the house batteries from the alternator several years ago. The out put is about what the base draw of the coach is when everything that can be shut off is off. We get between 5 and 7 amps at 13.1V on a good sunny day. Our panel is 2 x 4 feet. We are heavy power users. Before the brakes are cool the TV is hot! I can't see any difference in our electric usage or battery life when we are parked, even when boondocking it doesn't seem to make much difference. I'm sure if we were to minimize our energy use it would be more noticeable.

For the record, Greenwich Mean Time hasn't been used since 1972. Apparently the writer (could it be RV Winkle?) of this software was not aware of the change. It is now called Coordinated Universal Time, UTC or sometimes UT. There are differences, GMT was based on astronomical observations taken at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England. Today we take our time off the vibration of the cesium atom. For a thorough discussion of this see: http://www.answers.com/topic/coordinated-universal-time I have never seen GMT or UT given in any format other than 24 hour format, e.g. 1800 for 6:00 p.m. Another fact that escaped the software writer. In fact, that is the strength of using such a time standard. Once you know your longitude and/or local time difference then you always subtract (or add) that number to the UT to find your local time. Using UT allows people all over the earth to discuss the timing of an event (military for example) without the ambiguity of using times from different time zones. So, OK, I'm setting my controls to my time zone just as my computer is set. I had assumed the software would be written to pick up the time setting on my messages just as e-mail does. Wrong. Who writes this stuff anyway???

I'm not sure I understand the problem. Is this a motor home, a trailer or a mobile home? The latter two won't have an engine under the hood. I have never seen a room attached to a motor home that is still used as a motor home. If it is a motor home that is a piece of sculpture (not able to move any more) then that raises issues about the registration and licensing of the vehicle. If it is a mobile home or a trailer, the attached room would make more sense. It sounds to me as though MH would stand for mobile home on the title. Give us some more information and perhaps we can be of further help. What year and model of unit is this? Is it capable of being moved from its location under its own power? Do you plan to travel in this motor home if that is what it is? We park our motor home on a lot that we lease in Texas. We don't have an attached room and are gone six or seven months of the year. We have trailers and mobile homes in our park with attached rooms (we call the Texas Rooms!) so I could likely come up with some information for you by asking others.

No. 11. Always have someone watching your rear when you are backing up! Even with a camera, you can't see it all. We like using radios for communicating as opposed to the wave and shout method. No. 12. Don't get in a rush. If you find yourself in a difficult situation, take your time to look things over before you move.

I hold a private pilots license and have been flying for 12 years. I have never owned an airplane but do love to fly. Since getting my license I have always rented airplanes. When we sold our foundation house and bought the motor home I resolved to continue with my flying. Renting airplanes while traveling has certain obstacles that have to be overcome. Each new place that I rent requires a check ride with an instructor. This is standard for the industry due only in part to the requirement by insurance companies. So just to get the ability to rent, I'll spend $150 for an hour in a plane with an instructor. If that satisfies the instructor then they will sign me off to rent that particular model of plane. For this reason, I'll try to do this in an area where I can rent a plane several times while staying there. Occasionally if the sightseeing is especially interesting in an area I'll fly just one time to get to see the terrain. Most of the planes available for rent are Cessna 172's with an occasional Piper Cherokee. These are renting for about $100 per hour these days. The rates are for actual engine run time, not for parking. Thus I can fly to a location and have dinner or stay overnight and return the next day for less than $200 in rental fees for the plane. So where have I flown? One of my first road rentals was out of the Hemet, CA airport. We took an ugly green and yellow Cessna 152 for a flight over Joshua Tree National Park then on south to the Palm Springs airport. From there we circled the Salton Sea, landing at the Calapatria airport just south of the Salton Sea. Both landings were below sea level! We then continued on over the Anza-Borrego State Park and back to Hemet. We had hiked a number of trails in Joshua Tree and Anza-Borrego parks and enjoyed seeing the terrain from above. Seeing the wind generators near Palms Springs and making the landings below sea level were also interesting things to do. Later that same year we were staying in Visalia, CA where I rented a Piper Cherokee. We flew over the Sierra Nevada to Death Valley. We landed in Death Valley National Park at Furnace Creek. This is the lowest airport in North America being just a few miles from the lowest point in North America. The Furnace Creek airport is 216 feet below sea level. After eating lunch there we flew east to the Amargosa Valley to see our campsite when we stayed there. Then continuing back over some of our hiking routes in Death Valley we crossed the Sierra Nevada in eastern Yosemite National Park. Flying between peaks over frozen lakes we got a distant view of Half Dome. Then we landed at Columbia, CA where we had been told there was a restaurant within walking distance of the airport. We found the trail and walked to a little Mexican restaurant, had dinner then returned to the plane for a night take off and trip down the central valley of California. Out of the Montgomery County Airport we flew to airports in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware adding a few more states where I have flown. The restaurant we planned to eat at was not open the day we flew so we simply flew the circuit doing sightseeing. Staying near Mt. St. Helens in Washington, we have rented a Cessna 172 several times. Once making a sightseeing circuit around Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Ranier and through the Columbia Gorge. Another flight took us south to visit our daughter and son-in-law and his parents in Roseburg, OR. We had dinner with them then stayed overnight before returning to the Kelso-Longview airport where we had rented the plane. In Alaska I made two flights out of Merrill Field in Anchorage. One flight east to the Matanuska Glacier and then on to the south over the Kenai Peninsula before returning to Anchorage. The second flight was to the southern slopes of Denali to see the glacier fields there. In spring and fall I return to Missouri to visit our children. At the airport where I learned to fly I have a standing rental agreement and don't have to get a check ride each time I return. The same is true for our winter retreat in Edinburg, TX. This allows me to fly in both locations for less cost and I take full advantage of that. In Missouri we will fly our children and grandchildren for sightseeing. We enjoy flying to any of a number of nearby airports for lunch or dinner before returning home. In Texas we often fly with friends from our RV Park for sightseeing or to visit other locations. We recently spent a weekend with friends at Port Aransas on Mustang Island. Packing light and managing fuel we can fly four adults in a Cessna 172 for a short trip. There have been other flights, too many to describe all. One of the requirements for maintaining currency is to make at least 3 landings every 90 days. This means that sometime during the summer I must find a place to rent a plane and get at least a little flying in to stay current. Flying has added a great deal of pleasure to our travels. We get to see the land from a different perspective than most people do.

When we travel, proximity is our first concern. I would be most interested in having location information (map) and the ability to find nearby campgrounds and businesses on a common map. I seldom use the internet to search because the sites on the internet have a few hundred campgrounds. I can grab a book and look at virtually every campground in the area. So I want to see lots of campgrounds, the more the better. The second concern is rates for staying at campgrounds. There are guides that list recent rates in general terms and other guides that only occasionally list rates. My first choice is always to go to the guide that lists rates for every campground. If I can't find a campground near where I want to stay in the first guide, then I'll check the second guide. We usually don't spend too much time at any one campground during our summer travels so we will put up with less than excellent conditions for a brief stay. If conditions are bad enough we mark that campground off our personal list. A campground near our daughters home was a campground on our personal list for six years. Last year we ended up there because the campground had changed it name. It turns out the management had changed as well and the campground was now welcoming and a much friendlier campground. Being able to rate campgrounds would be useful but I prefer independent ratings based on specific criteria. When it comes to businesses, ratings from members would be helpful. Businesses are in my estimation even more proximity dependent when the need is a repair or emergency situation. Links to the campground or business are a must and keeping data current should be a priority. Now, here is the kicker. We avoid schedules whenever possible. We frequently travel for a day and then decide where we'll stay for the night or for a few days. I don't need an internet connection to use the book references. The internet information would have to be considerably more powerful than the books to make it the first place that I go. Internet connections are still difficult to come by especially when north of the border. Slow connections abound and web pages are getting more complex and slower to load. This makes searching for information a very trying process. So keep it simple and quick to find any campground and then make the information as complete as you can.

Brat I'm no mechanic so can't give you all the help you need. A couple of questions... Did you buy the Revcon new or used? I can't imagine that a new model was out of the factory with cables and wires disconnected. If you are parking your unit for any length of time without running the engine, you need to add a fuel additive to keep the fuel from gumming up the fuel lines or fuel injectors. This would explain your fuel problems. They have good fuel additives at Wal-Mart or at auto stores. Once you have the additive in the tank, you have to run the engine to get it into the fuel lines and the engine. The additive won't last forever so it is good to get out and drive once in a while. Make a monthly run to the grocery store or something like that. For the wiring and hoses, you need a qualified RV mechanic. If Revcon is still in business, they would be your best source. If not, go to a RV dealer or to a RV repair shop. You may even be able to find an RV technician in your RV park. This won't be cheap, it is part of the cost of RVing. One possible solution for you would be to sell the Revcon and purchase a fifth wheel trailer. If you aren't interested in traveling, a trailer makes much better sense. You wouldn't have an engine and all that entails. If you need to move your trailer periodically you could hire someone to do that for you.

If you are looking for a place to stay in the Denver area, we recommend Prospect RV Park. Rates are quite reasonable. Electric is 30 amp and connections are shared but you can stay for $30 a night. It is located along I-70 on the west side of Denver in Wheat Ridge, not far from Camping World. There is direct access to a trail system for walking, running and bicycling. Nearby are sports fields and tennis courts. You are not far from shopping areas, etc. Nancy Liard manages the campground for her parents. Call 303-424-4414 ahead of time to reserve a site. When Prospect Park is full we have stayed at Dakota Ridge RV Park. This is an upscale park with upscale prices. They really know how to run a park right but the prices reflect that. This park is about 4 miles further west on I-70. Their phone number is 303-279-1625.

Several years ago we loaded up the motor home and headed to Oklahoma. Our daughter, her husband, their 5-year-old son, Ryan, and 1-year-old daughter would travel separately and join us to stay in the motor home each night. When we visited our daughter's family, we were always parked in my mother's driveway. So my grandson was used to seeing our motor home next to great-grandma's house. We arrived at the campground in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, several hours ahead of our daughter and family. When they arrived, Ryan came running up to us and gave us both a hug. Then he looked around and asked, "Where is great-grandma's house?" Clearly in his mind, the motor home should always be parked at great grandma's house. We all had a good laugh at that one. An amazing glimpse into the 5-year-old mind. On our trip we visited Woolarock near Bartlesville, the Will Rogers Museum and the Gun Museum in Claremore, and the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. At each museum there were great opportunities for a curious little boy to explore. He was broken-hearted when he couldn't sit in the bright red Phillips Petroleum truck in the museum. Dad is an avid hunter and Ryan loved all the living and preserved animals on the grounds at Woolarock and all the exotic animal trophies at the Gun Museum. He enjoyed naming each one. In the Will Rogers museum there is a stage and a fantastic collection of dress up clothes so the kids can put on their own play. There is a whole separate building for kids at the Cowboy Museum. They can dress up like a cowboy, sit on saddles, play with the chuck wagon. We continued on to Amarillo, TX, where Ryan's dad went on a guided hunting trip. We took mom and the kids to Palo Duro Canyon for a hike to the lighthouse. Along the way Ryan enjoyed looking for animals including his imaginary horse Blackie. He even asked a couple on horseback if they had seen blackie. They played right along and said they saw him just a little way down the trail. He walked almost four miles that day, swung his arm and caught a few cactus needles in his hand and finally mom had to carry him. Not because he wouldn't walk, he was so busy looking at everything it was going to take us two hours to get back to the car. There were thunderstorms showing up in the late afternoon and we didn't want to get caught out in one. I carried his younger sister in a back pack most of the trip. She was all eyes looking around to see everything she could. Ryan's Halloween costume that fall was a cowboy, complete with chaps and a cowboy hat. It was one great trip!

My wife bought me a Garmin etrex Vista GPS for Christmas 2007 and I have found it to be most versatile. To begin with, the only other GPS I had was a portable unit for aviation. I use it when I rent airplanes as we travel. For aviation purposes, it can't be beat. The Garmin etrex Vista is a portable GPS with a 1.375 x 1.75 inch screen - so not a huge display. The etrex Vista can use road maps from all over the US and Canada. The unit came with topographic maps for the US. I immediately ordered the road maps for US & Canada as well as the topographic maps for Canada. Clip this unit to your belt and go hiking. You can track your distance traveled and location. Mark where you parked the car and it will show you how far it is back to the car. Lost? Just ask it to find the way point at the car and it will lead you right back to the car. The topographic maps aren't highly detailed but will give you an idea of elevation changes to expect on a hike. I use the GPS to map my favorite golf courses. The first time I use it I mark the center of each green as a waypoint. Then I put these together into a route, one for the front nine and one for the back nine. As I play each hole I can determine the distance to the center of the green and select the appropriate club. Download the route to your computer and then view it on Google Earth! You can even see your track that shows where you were on the golf course, off in the rough here, down the fairway there. Yep, that was me circling that lake looking for my golf ball! What a hoot!!! Yes there are dedicated golf GPS units that don't require you to map a course to use it but they don't show you where you have been and won't do you any good when driving the car. The unit has a mounting which can be used with a handlebar mount ordered separately. Put the etrex on the bicycle and you know how fast you are going and how far you have ridden. It will show you how long you have ridden, how much time is moving and how much stopped. It shows maximum speed, moving average speed or just average speed. All these features can be used when hiking or in the car. Used with the road maps you can use it to navigate just as in the car. It leaves "bread crumbs", a track that shows your route of travel. Retracing your travel is easy. Garmin has a "sandbag" that will sit on your dashboard and holds the unit in a convenient location for viewing while traveling. You can also purchase adhesive mounts to hold the GPS anywhere you want to stick it. Plug it into the 12V power source and use it just like any road GPS. We use it in the RV when relocating from one place to another. When the RV is parked we use it in the car. No need to learn several different systems when moving from the RV to the toad. The more you use it, the easier it becomes. This GPS doesn't talk to you, it beeps several times as you approach each turn. It also shows you the upcoming turn, auto zooming to give you the detail you need to see. Looking for a parking spot for the night, it gives you distance and direction to the nearest Wal-Mart. It also locates thousands of other businesses by name or category. Select grocery stores and it lists them in order from the nearest on as far as you want to go. Want to find the nearest Safeway, enter the name and search for the nearest. Pick from the list it gives you and tell it to go to it. Then all you have to do is follow its directions! Select foods and then nearest containing ice cream and there are the directions to a nearby ice cream shop. This is a real time saver when you are in a new location and don't know your way around. Men, you may never have to stop to ask directions again!!! I even take this GPS along on commercial air flights so I can look out the window and know what city that is or the name of that lake or river. I can tell how fast the airplane is going and how far it is to our destination. On a recent SW Airlines flight to Denver I enjoyed watching the miles click off every 8 or 9 seconds! Now that is moving. The etrex isn't perfect, no GPS is these days but it is a very handy device for those of us who are frequently in locations that are not familiar to us. One GPS I can use everywhere is the main strength of this unit. It does leave one dilemma. Where do I go when my wife says straight ahead and the GPS wants me to go left??? Well, most husbands know the answer to that one. I don't sleep with the GPS at night!

What's not to love about Texas? We have wintered in south Texas for 8 winters. I have learned to live with the wind and dust. When the wind isn't blowing, the gnats will make you crazy. Still, it is nice and warm in the winter and the cost of living is very reasonable. We enjoy taking a different route south each winter and another exit from Texas in the spring. Along the way we see something new every year. Someday we may end up staying in Texas for the summer but that will be only after we are unable to continue RVing.

Our plans are to make a run to Florida for the launch of STS 125 and STS 127 (shuttle launches) in mid May. We'll swing through eastern TN to visit my brother then to St. Louis for a visit with mom, children and grandchildren and of course our original home doctors/dentists. We are planning a fun trip for our grandsons, 9yrs and 8yrs old. Highlights will be the Abe Lincoln Historical Site in Spirngfield, IL, the Childrens Museum in Indianapolis and Louisville Slugger factory in - well - Louisville, KY! Throw in a few state parks for fun hiking and we'll give them something to report on next fall when school starts. Then in July, we hope to get to Bowling Green Ohio. We'll meet friends in western New York (Buffalo) and if their plans hold, we'll travel with (or without) them to the Maritime Provinces of Canada. If fuel prices stay at current levels, we'll go on to Newfoundland. Newfoundland and Quebec are the two of three remaining provinces we haven't visited with the RV. I don't think we'll ever get to Nunavut! Actually we didn't take the motor home to the NW Territory. Returning from that trip, we'll swing through St. Louis for family and doctor visits again then on to Colorado in late September for a visit with family there, then on to Valley Springs, CA to visit another daughter and granddaughters. By the end of October we'll be headed for our winter retreat in southern Texas. This is typical of our pattern of summer activity over the 8 years we have been full timing.

Thanks for the suggestion Xplorer. My initial thought was to do just that. I could put a piece of paneling over the spot. It is a small area, about 5" x 30". I decided to wait and think about other solutions. A friend of mine suggested the vinyl repair route and that would be ideal if we could get it repaired without a big fuss. I'll try at least one more vinyl repair facility to see if somebody has a better solution. Otherwise I'll go with the wood panel. It could be glued in place or I could attach with small screws countersunk into the paneling and then painted to match.

I have just completed replacing the analog televisions in our 2004 motor home with flat screen HD LCD TV's. Both projects were done with a little help from friends but were relatively simple to do and the results are spectacular. Our coach is a Monaco 40' Windsor. The front TV has been a head knocker since we purchased the coach. This being our second Monaco, we knew what we were getting. Now the flat screen TV has allowed me to cut the cabinet back in size to move it largely out of the way of incoming heads! The old 24 inch TV was replaced with a 32 inch Sharp HD LCD. The old TV weighed 75 pounds. The new one weighs about 27 pounds. The new LCD TV uses about 100 Watts, the same as a 100 Watt light bulb. I took 5 inches off the depth of the cabinet and 2 inches off the height of the cabinet. The cabinet front now is flush with the bottom of the adjacent electronics cabinets. The bottom of the cabinet extends about 5 inches below those same cabinets. The cabinet was screwed together but not glued so it was easy to disassemble. I took the pieces to a friend who has a nice wood shop. He cut five inches off the back edge of each side leaving the finished front edge. The back edge would be covered by the piece on back of the cabinet. On the cabinet floor he cut 5 inches off at an angle. This time I asked him to cut off the front to preserve the best piece of the back. This eliminated the need to cover the screw holes in the base from mounting the old TV. I then cut the finished edge of the scrap from the base and attached it to the front edge of the base. The cabinet was shortened by cutting two inches off the top of the cabinet. To make it fit as the original I had to do some additional trimming on the rear of each side piece at the top but this was not a precision cut and would not show when the cabinet was reinstalled. I have elected not to put the frame on the front of the cabinet as the appearance of the clean screen appeals more to me than having part of the TV concealed by a frame. The frame is stored in case I change my mind. The manual controls on the Sharp TV are on the top of the set. I left a blank space in the top trim piece to allow access to those controls. Access to these is handy when someone comes to the door and you need to mute or turn off the TV. While remodeling I made an additional change. The dash and stairwell have always been poorly lit at night so I went to Home Depot and purchased a couple of small spotlights which I mounted on the side of the cabinet. These are on a rheostat control which makes for a nice background light for night viewing and also illuminates the dash and stairwell with good light at the touch of a switch. If you look at the pictures, you will see that the ceiling remains to be healed. I have talked to a car repair shop about vinyl repair but the solution I was offered was not acceptable. They wanted to replace the whole front panel of the ceiling. I may end up doing that but will check other shops to see if there is a simpler alternative. For now, the impressions of the cabinet are relaxing and becoming less noticeable. In fact I hardly notice them anymore. They are more noticeable in the picture than their actual appearances. If anyone has suggestions here I'd love to hear them. The TV is rear mounted on a steel frame which I had fabricated at a local welding shop. The frame was modeled after a friends TV mount in their 2008 motor home. Steel weighs more than their aluminum frame but the steel frame is simpler and cheaper to install. I am still many pounds ahead of the old TV. So I have a larger TV with much better native resolution and the ability to receive all digital broadcasts without an additional converter box. By the way, I picked up the TV at about 30% off as a display model at the local Wal-Mart. The old Sony TV had speakers on the side of the screen. The new TV with its wider screen almost exactly matches the old TV's width but is a little shorter. What I am looking at now is almost all screen! One caveat, our KVH dish depends on an old Hughes receiver with its slow speed data port. The old receiver is also in my friends 2008 RV! This receiver puts out only an analog signal. As a result, the picture I am watching when using the dish (most of the time) is an analog signal. It still looks so much sharper on the LCD TV that we are very pleased with it. One of my first reactions was that I could now read the fine print at the bottom of the screen on the commercial disclaimers! Of course they don't leave time to read more than three words! But now I can read all the score and game information on the sports channels. Direct TV says I can replace the old receiver but KVH tells me that new receivers don't have the required low speed data port to accommodate the auto search feature of the dish. So I could manually tell the dish if I have the right satellite or select search again if it finds the wrong satellite. For now I'm accepting the analog picture as a trade off on not having to mess with locating the satellite in a more tedious manner. One additional change I made was to run a S-Video connection from the satellite receiver to the TV. This improved the picture and now I can change from satellite TV to broadcast TV by simply changing the input selection on the TV with the remote instead of using the switch box which requires manually switching from antenna to satellite. In eight years of living full time in motor homes full time I have never used the VCR. Using it would require an adapter or replacement with a digital recorder of some type. In the rear, the cabinet for the TV was a fixed cabinet which offered no advantage in reducing cabinet size. I toyed with the idea of using the space behind the TV for some storage but the angled shape of the cabinet and the fact it already housed some other electronics made it impractical. I removed the old 20" Sony TV which weighed 50 pounds and replaced it with a LG 26" HD LCD TV which weighed 23 pounds. The TV was picked up as a floor model from Circuit City just after they went out of business. Again the savings was substantial. The LG TV didn't have strong rear mount studs. They are only attached to the plastic back of the TV and the manual cautions against installing the TV in an angled position in a normal static installation. The rear attachments clearly would not be sufficient for use in a motor home. So I altered plans and installed the TV on its base mount. There was sufficient space in the cabinet to use the old angled base from the old TV. The base had a hole for a securing screw. I screwed the base to the angled base which is screwed into the base of the cabinet in the original position. The top of the TV rests against the inside of the cabinet which I lined with a rubber seal for a cushion. There is sufficient tension on the base of the TV to keep the TV from rocking back and forth while traveling. To conceal the base mount, I took a piece which had been removed from the front TV cabinet and angled it from just inside the base of the cabinet and up over the plastic base of the TV as a kind of skirt. It looks like the TV is sitting on the skirt. I cut a notch in the skirt so it fits over the support column for the TV and the skirt then provides an additional anchor to hold the base of the TV down. The TV is entirely recessed in the cabinet. Both projects started with substantial research on-line. After carefully measuring each cabinet I began looking at TV dimensions. I was pleased to find that each cabinet would accommodate a larger screen TV. I made a list of suitable models and kept this as my shopping list. Then when I found a possible TV on sale I could quickly check my list to see if it was a suitable model for my application. Both TV's are HD but I really don't find many models that are just digital TV and those are not as desirable as the LCD TV's. I had to dig hard and long to find information on the cabling for digital TV. It turns out that the normal antenna cable transmits a fine HD signal. There are HDMI cables for best HD signal but these are not necessary to get a good HD signal. Both TV's are 720P which all consumer advice sources indicate are sufficient for TV's less than 40" screen size. Had I realized the LG TV didn't have a strong wall mounting apparatus I would not have purchased it. In addition it has menu and feature quirks that I consider undesirable. Lesson learned... anyone want to buy a slightly used LCD TV? Both projects were completed inside of three weeks while we were staying at our winter retreat in Texas. My wife tolerated the tool boxes and disarray for three weeks and I really appreciate the minimal complaints. Now she just marvels at how good the picture is on the TV!