tbutler

Four 12V household batteries hooked up in the series/parallel manner as the 6V batteries would give you 24 V and fry lots of stuff. The 6V batteries that should have been installed would be hooked up in series 2x2 to give 12 volts and then in parallel to give additional amp hours. Had the 12V batteries been all hooked up in parallel the voltage would have been 12V which is what the system is intended to work with. Check fuses to see if/which are blown and then rewire batteries to a 12 V status. I don't know how you rewire four 12V batteries to get 6V but if they did, that is 1/2 the voltage you should have. That would also explain the failure of anything to operate. Your household batteries should provide power at 12V. This is done by hooking up 2 6V batteries one behind the other + to - to + to - and then doing the same with the other two 6V batteries. Then these pairs are hooked up in parallel, + to + and - to - . This adds "depth" to the 12V power (doubling the amp hours of storage). Finally, if the 12V batteries are "starting" batteries, not deep cycle batteries, they are completely the wrong kind of batteries and should be returned to the shop where originally sold and exchanged for 6V deep cycle batteries (commonly referred to as golf cart batteries). As I have never heard of using four 12V batteries, the shop you had install the batteries must have been completely unfamiliar with RV systems. They owe you a big apology and a full refund.

Hello Richard and Karen, I assume you got my message I posted on your Blog last night. I was talking about a fuse on the toilet itself. If the toilet and the CO detector are both out, you would be looking for a 12V fuse somewhere in a control panel. In our motor home, the 12V house fuses are located in a panel in the bedroom. I know that many of the newer coaches have electronics located in the closet in the back of the RV. You should have a very good owners manual in your Camelot. Look in that owners manual for the location of the 12V house fuses. You are not looking for the automotive 12V fuses which are located in an outside compartment usually under the drivers seat. We should have a Camelot owner who can further enlighten you but it may take a day or two for them to pick up on this post.

As we have traveled the US and Canada we have enjoyed getting way off the beaten path taking some 4WD roads to adventure. I'll share a few of those in hopes that others will contribute some of their own. Our first encounter with 4WD roads was in Death Valley National Park our first year out. We didn't have a 4WD vehicle so we could only read and wish. There are some great 4WD roads there including one that is listed as for experienced 4WD drivers only, deep sand! In Big Bend National Park we drove several 4WD roads including one that roughly parallels the Rio Grande River from one side of the park to the other. That drive took all day to go 50 miles. Part of the time was my taking about 400 pictures. The cactus was in full bloom and there was no end of beautiful scenery. The road was definitely a 4WD road with rough arroyo crossings. In Alaska we found some rugged roads that could be traveled with 2WD but were easier in 4WD. Wrangell-St. Elias National Park in eastern Alaska has two roads into the park. Both roads are gravel and fairly easy to travel but the northern road crosses several streams. The loose gravel bottoms would have been dicey with 2WD. The southern road is more a tire hazard than a 4WD road. It goes about 60 miles into the park to Kennicott Glacier. The road is an old railroad grade and a few of the railroad spikes and other debris occasionally come to the surface. We encountered the mother of all 4WD roads a few years ago in Canada. There is an area identified as Crown Land in northern Ontario. Chapleau Crown Game Preserve north of Sioux Ste. Marie and east of Wawa is logged land that is remote and now rich in wildlife. We saw numerous moose and bear. There is a loop road, the western portion is wide and easily traveled. The eastern part of the loop is narrow, rugged and challenging in a 4WD. We negotiated through a ditch for about 400 feet to get around a beaver dam built right on the road. Further down the road we had to go through a series of wash outs up to six feet wide and better than a foot deep. I would only advise taking this road in a 4WD vehicle. It was that remote loop where we saw most of the wildlife. Finally I'll mention a road not taken. We spent three weeks in the summer of 2007 touring Utah with friends. Canyonlands National Park has four wheel drive roads along what is called the white rim of the canyon. Our friends had a 4WD also but the women didn't want to do the drive. Someday we'll return to see that territory. Now, if you are a 4WD fan, share a few locations where you have found good roads for 4 wheeling.

Rolacoy, Welcome to the FMCA Community! Looking for an active forum? Why not help make this one more active? There are lots of people reading here, give them something to talk about. Find a forum that is of interest to you and join the conversation. Post some questions and start a conversation. You'll get out of the forum what you put into it! As you said, there are lots of Class B motor homes on the road. Help get them talking right here. Start by telling the rest of us what is unique about Class B travel. Maybe start a Blog with some of your adventures. This is a relatively new website so you can help make it successful!

Here is a tip for those who have to go through a "process" to get a vehicle ready to tow. I made a checklist on the computer and printed it off to use. After several uses, made revisions to make sure everything was included in the right order. Then I printed it off and had it laminated. That is stored in the drivers side pocket of the toad for ready reference. We don't really use it any more for the hitch stuff but the transmission shift process is involved enough that the checklist comes out of the pocket every time we tow. Louise usually takes care of that process while I do the hitch stuff. The list really comes in handy when I have to do the shifting! I put the towing checklist on one side of the sheet and the back into service checklist on the other side of the sheet before laminating. It is a half sheet of paper, 8.5 x 5.5 inches and very convenient to find and use. I also keep similar checklists for things like checking the transmission fluid level in the Allison transmission in the drivers side map pocket of the motor home. What can I say, I'm a pilot, we use checklists for getting dressed in the morning... pants first then shoes!

Cathe, Thanks for your story. We'll be looking forward to seeing you on the road! I'll give you some details of our move. After doing the book study and deciding on South Dakota, we corresponded with Ron Triebwasser at My Home Address. He recommended an attorney who handled a number of his clients so we made an appointment with her. We signed up with Ron and he gave us our new address. We flew to Sioux Falls one weekend, rented a car. Our first stop the next morning was at the drivers license bureau. We turned in our Missouri drivers licenses and got new South Dakota licenses with our new address on the spot. Our SD drivers licenses expire every 5 years. Our motor home was purchased from individuals so we didn't have license plates on it yet. We went to Ron and accompanied him to the the county court house and registered the motor home and got our license plate for it (that is the short version, it took a little more than that because of special circumstances). After the meeting with our attorney, our wills and estate were modified for South Dakota laws. That concluded our visit to South Dakota. We returned home, put the new plates on our motor home, moved it out of storage and began moving into it. Our house wasn't sold, it wasn't even cleaned out yet. We found a park near our home and commuted to the house every day, going about the process of cleaning it out and fixing it up. We took trips on weekends to get familiar with our new home. I had a workshop to attend in Florida so we spent a week and half on that trip. When we returned we moved into another park with better facilities. We got the car licensed about a month after the motor home. It was all done by mail. We finished moving out of the house and now moved to another RV park closer to our children. We stayed there until late in November. Just before we left we finally sold my pickup truck. We were now down to the motor home, our car and a tow dolly. We headed south to New Orleans and spent a long Thanksgiving weekend enjoying the southern breezes. Louise cooked Thanksgiving dinner in the RV! From there we went to Houston where I had flight training scheduled with the Texas Air Aces. I would learn to fly and recover from unusual attitudes in small airplanes. We spent a week there, enjoyed Tomball and Spring. We left Houston in a heavy downpour headed for San Antonio. Friends from our pilot's group in Missouri met us in San Antonio and showed us around the area. We entertained in our motor home for the first time. We stayed in Boerne just north of San Antonio the month of December. We returned to Missouri at Christmas and were able to sign the papers for the sale of our home while there. When we returned to Boerne, the weather was colder than we had hoped for so we took the advice of the campground owner in Tomball who suggested we might enjoy "the valley," the Rio Grande Valley of extreme south Texas. On January 1 we left Boerne and didn't stop until we got to Edinburg, Texas. On the way south, Louise had found us an RV park. We pulled in and said we would stay for three days. Shortly after arriving we went back to the office and extended our stay to a week. Before the week was up, we extended to a month and then two months. We left at the end of February for other commitments. We have been back to that park every winter since. Now I go through all this to show that the break with the old home state can be a gradual one. How fast you are able to make that transition may depend on a lot of things but the important thing is that you continue to make progress to get it all together in your new state. As soon as we had our address and our drivers licenses, we contacted our retirement system and had our address changed. This immediately stopped the state withholding on our paychecks. That was about a $1000 a month pay raise. Various pension systems have their own rules about residency and how it affects taxes on pensions. I believe that California pensioners have to pay California taxes on their pension no matter where they live. In 2002 I filed my last Missouri state income tax for the part of the year 2001 we lived in Missouri. There is no income tax in South Dakota and we don't have to file a form. I hadn't thought about that in a while, I remember being so happy, just filing that Missouri form was such a pain, not talking about the money, talking about all the quirky rules! Now it is just a distant memory. As to cost of living, I'll refer you to a post I made about 2 weeks ago on under the heading: Buying a Motorhome:Cost of Motorhome Ownership. In that post I put our budget for major items in actual dollar terms. Our lifestyle and motor home affect those numbers, I know there are people who spend less, likely lots less, and there are those who spend much more. Hope some of this helps. Keep asking questions...

I ran across this blog from a writer for RV magazines. It has references to roads and some of the things they saw along the way. Their routing was different from ours but they ended up seeing many of the places we saw. Here is the web site: http://rvstufff.blogspot.com/ Fair number of pictures as well as well written dialog.

I can't speak for the Avalanche but the Tahoe we looked at had the same kind of process our Trailblazer uses. You have to put the transfer case into neutral by holding the switch to the neutral position about 15 seconds (all after starting and shifting per instructions). Once it shifts to neutral the car is free wheeling. You then check that by shifting the transmission into drive and reverse just to make sure the transfer case is in neutral. We have to pull a couple of fuses under the hood and then we're ready to tow. We have had problems with a loose connection at the switch from time to time. Apparently ordinary driving will cause the wiring connector to come loose and then we can't shift into or out of neutral. I have figured out the emergency fix for that is a calibrated smack on the dash about 5 cm to the right or left of the switch! If that doesn't work repeat until it does. If all else fails, invoke a mild to major curse and smack it again! Viola! Ready to tow!!!

SeaJay, I've seen your cars, or at least pictures of them. They are very nice cars! No official word on towing cars on tow dollies recommends towing with the rear wheels on the tow dolly! There are technical reasons for this having to do with the way the front wheels are aligned for stability in forward travel. Run it backwards and it becomes inherently unstable. Tire wear will likely be a problem. See the discussion under Technical:Towing:Tow Dolly Considerations for both sides of this argument. Plus, I've had flat tires on tow dollies and only known when a passing motorist flagged us down. I know you will hear from people who have done it for years and done so successfully but I think you would be best advised not to do that. If I had one of your cars, the only way I would put it behind the motor home would be in an enclosed trailer! Think about it. Have you ever been stuck, pinched in behind a tractor trailer truck a little too close? Were you anxious about what was going to come up off the road from that truck? Having your nose (or tail) stuck to the back of a motor home is a terrible place to be. Your beautiful car will take some hits. We have a guardian on our tow bar, a full width mud flap on the rear of the motor home and mud flaps on each wheel of the motor home and we still found gravel on the roof of our Trailblazer. We added a bra that covers the front end and the windshield and it chafes the paint in a few areas. We get sand and dirt on the side windows and that scratches them when you raise and lower them. It is hard duty for any vehicle. I am resolved to keep the Trailblazer until we quit full-timing just because of the damage the car gets behind the motor home. I would never put a new car or valuable car behind the motor home knowing what I know now. That is just my opinion, I could be wrong! After reading the above referenced discussion again, I'm certain I'll be wrong - for somebody!

Welcome to the FMCA Community! So glad to see you here! Everyone wants to know about you! You can put your information here and we might find it... But if you go to My Controls at the top of this page, you can find a place to tell us who you are, what your hobbies are, what you drive, what you did, where you are, even if you want, your birthday! Each month FMCA draws a name out of the hat for the birthdays that month and gives away a free RV wash done by the FMCA Community moderators!!!! NOT! Really, please take a few minutes to start filling in some of the blanks on My Controls. It helps us all know you better. Then when we click on your name with an article we can read all about you. Also, things like your signature let us know what equipment you are using. That helps a lot if you have a question about something related to your motor home. If you ask questions about places to visit we want to know what your interests are. Need some help? Go to "Forum Support" under the Forum category "Miscellaneous". You will find a post titled, "READ FIRST: Forum basics. Start now, go to the line that says logged in as: Click on My Controls... Fill in one category. Then click on your log in name and see what it looks like! That is what we will see when we come to visit you! And it will be handy for us, right there with each and every message you post. You can change the information with time! Look at what some of us do with our information and use that as an example. Well, maybe not... This community is like any other, you get out of it what you put into it. Again, welcome and enjoy the community that is FMCA!

The standard receiver on all Monaco diesels has been 10,000 pounds for the last 15 years. We had a '94 Dynasty with a 10,000 pound hitch. We have friends that have towed an Avalanche with no problems for years. Their coach wasn't a Monaco. I don't think they are on the FMCA website but I'm betting we'll find someone else who tows the Avalanche. And, yes, check with the company that is supplying your tow bar and other equipment to be sure all is rated to carry that load. I don't think the Avalanche will come close to the 10,000 pounds even loaded with your equipment. We recently took a look at a Chevy Tahoe and it had a GVWR of 7,300 pounds. I'm betting the GW of those two vehicles are about the same. In fact I just checked the statistics on the FMCA Towables article for 2009 and the Avalanche outweighs the Tahoe by 90 pounds! The curb weight listed there is 5560. That doesn't count fuel, equipment loaded on board, etc. I would get a tow bar rated above the GVWR just to be safe.

Welcome to the forum TD, You have raised a real good question! When we went full time almost 8 years ago we found a resource that listed all the states and their residency requirements along with their tax structure, etc. I don't think it is the same book but here is one that covers the same kind of information: Selecting an RV Home Base. This link has been updated August 2011 to replace one that no longer worked. There are legal issues. When we went full time we went to a lawyer in our new home state, South Dakota, and had our trust and wills altered to fit the legal requirements of South Dakota. At that time she gave us a sheet that described what courts look at in determining state of residence. Some people get themselves into a legal gray area by having drivers license from state A and a mailing address in state B while perhaps owning property in state C. When you try to claim state B for tax purposes, you can put yourself in a real bind. Then purchasing a motor home in State D and paying no sales or excise tax there further clouds the situation. There are lots of items from memberships in organizations to voting to vehicle registration, etc. that can be examined to determine where you actually live. The thing I would be careful of is to make the move as completely as you can. Our drivers license, vehicle registration and mailing address all match. When we bought a new motor home we paid our excise tax in South Dakota as well (it was a fraction of what our state income tax would have been in our original home state). We vote in South Dakota also. The stronger you make this link to your new home state, the stronger your case will be if there is ever a question. Having said all that, I will say that South Dakota works really well for us. I'll not go into details here but you can find information about using South Dakota as a home state at http://www.myhomeaddressinc.com

While you are at it, when the photograph comes up and you are looking at the data to be filled in, it will have a title like 27541.jpeg which is your file name for the photo that you uploaded to the web site. Change that name to something descriptive of the photo, a short title, so that when people drag the cursor over your photo on the random gallery display in the community page, they will get an idea of what the photo is about. See how it works with one of my albums in the gallery. You should be able to drag the cursor over any of the pictures and get a title for the picture.

Doug, You plan trips differently than I do! I plan to go see stuff and then pick the campgrounds. But OK, in Flagstaff there is the Lowell Observatory where Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto. Not too far north of Flagstaff is the Grand Canyon. East on I-40 from Flagstaff is (about exit 233 I think) Meteor Crater formed by an impact of a small asteroid, quite impressive. Also in the same area east of Winslow, AZ is the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest. Both are worth a stop along the way. The Painted Desert is best at sunrise or sunset, beautiful colors. The fossil trees in the Petrified Forest are amazing. Amarillo has the Quarter Horse Museum. You can also get a 64 oz. steak at a restaurant east of there (check the billboards). If you can eat the whole steak in an hour you get it free! Don't eat for a week and maybe you'll have a shot at it! South of Amarillo is Palo Duro Canyon with some interesting features. We've had a nice hike there to the Lighthouse Formation. In Oklahoma City is the memorial to the victims of the Federal Building bombing, the first terrorist attack on the US. Also in Oklahoma City, a happier place to visit is the Cowboy Museum. East of Tulsa on I-44 at Claremore is the Will Rogers Memorial, if you are a fan of Will Rogers, this is a nice stop. Also in Claremore is the Jim Davis Gun Museum. A massive collection of guns of all kinds, from frontier days to WWII military. The collection includes much more than guns, well worth the stop. Turning the corner in Springfield, MO as you head south to Branson, you might want to stop at the original Bass Pro Shop. They have a good restaurant in the store! In Nashville, I wouldn't miss spending a day at the Grand Ol' Oprey Hotel. Shopping, dining and just walking through the awesome atria is worth the stop. There are numerous bars with CW music/dancing in Nashville, check the campground host for suggestions, bring your boots for scootin! East of there through the Smoky Mountains, it is beautiful country. Great Smoky Mountain National Park is southeast of Knoxville. Knoxville itself is a pretty city. Before you get to GSMNP, you will go through Pigeon Forge. If you are a fan, stop in Dollywood! We had an interesting evening there! If your route takes you through Asheville, NC, you must stop and see the Biltmore Estate, http://www.biltmore.com/visit/ . A truly amazing mansion built by one of the Vanderbilt descendants. More rooms than you can tour in a day! This is spectacular, we toured it at Christmastime in 2003 and they had a decorated Christmas tree in every room! Have lunch in the stable! From there to College Park, you are in Revolutionary/Civil War territory, take your pick of battlefields and historic sites. Of course the whole Washington, DC thing is at your door step in College Park. My only advice is to find the Metro parking lot and ride the train where you want to go. Take water to drink in the summer or be ready to buy it, hot and steamy but well worth the time and sweat! Now, if you want to visit antique shops... It is hard for me to know exactly what your interests are, these suggestions are things we have seen and visited along your route and reflect our interests. Enjoy the trip!

Don, I would love to help but I'm 1000 miles away and headed the other direction! Anyway, I just don't know enough about your system to help you. I have two sources that may help. First, there is a Monaco group on Yahoo that has a pretty high level discussion on-going. There seem to be some experts with experience on technical aspects of all Monaco products. I suggest you contact them, their address is: http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/Monacoers/ From that web site I got a Monaco Tech number that one of the posts said was now active. That number is 800 450-6336. You might try that and report back to us if it is a working number and what kind of help you were able to get. I also saw an e-mail address for Monaco Tech Help but can't find it right now. When I come across it again I'll pass it along as well.

Thanks Brett, I second the monitoring voltage comment. As mentioned, we have a monitor in the RV that allows me to monitor the voltage and just as you said when we move into a new park, I'll watch to see how the AC, microwave, washing machine/drier, coffee pot affect the voltage. The more things Louise turns on the closer I watch the voltage until I am satisfied that the park electrical system is up to par.

This is part of a continuing discussion of the aspects of going full time in an RV. In part one we examined the decision to go full time. If you haven't added to that discussion, please take time to tell your story. Likewise, add your thoughts about cleaning house as you went full time to this discussion. Our story: After we reached the decision to go full time, we faced a house full of stuff collected over a lifetime. Some of the items we had would go with us in the motor home. Most of the stuff would have to go somewhere else. Our choices were: 1) Store things we valued too much or thought would be useful in the future. The family photo albums and a huge collection of 35mm slides fit this category. We also stored some of our art collection, paintings, pictures and sculpture with special meaning to us. Then there was the ridiculous, I had more t-shirts than we could pack. So I saved them along with a box full of hats. I should have known these things multiply and I've never needed those old t-shirts! 2) Give our children first choice on any of the remaining items. TV's, stereo/CD player, surround sound system, chairs, tables, couch, a home gym set, table saws and an assortment of lawn and garden tools all went to our children. We had heirloom furniture passed down from my grandparents and an aunt that were given to specific children. Those items are still in the family. 3) We had a series of garage sales. Living in a metropolitan area, we had a wide audience for our stuff. Still, garage sales are what they are. Everyone is looking for a bargain. On the other hand, most of this stuff was what the kids had picked through so it wasn't that valuable! Only we thought it was valuable. We had collections of things that we parted with, we just couldn't store everything. With the garage sale, we listed all the furniture inside the house that was for sale and were able to sell almost all of it. I sold my motorcycle and pickup truck through ads in the newspaper. 4) We gave large quantities of clothing, books, other items to charities. I got rid of all my business suits! 5) We hauled one pickup load of absolute junk to the junk yard. That it was only one pickup load amazed me. When we were all done, the items for storage were packed in boxes, marked carefully and taken to my son's basement where they stayed until his divorce. Then we put them in commercial storage for about two months while my daughter and her husband finished their home. We moved them to their basement where they have been ever since. We stop and visit them (our stored stuff) occasionally, dropping off this, picking up that. Someday when this adventure ends, we'll collect them and make them part of our new home. The total of the stored materials will fill a small U-Haul trailer. Once in a while I get a twinge thinking about one thing or another that we sold or gave away thinking it might have been nice to keep that but in reality, it wasn't that important that I couldn't live without it. Once you get rid of the stuff and the house, you life becomes so much simpler. The travel it makes possible more than makes up for occasionally missing something. We had the house on the market at a premium price and it had several offers that fell through before we got a buyer. We left town just before Thanksgiving 2001 even though the house hadn't sold. We returned in late December to sign the final papers on the house and then we were full timers for good!

A cat that answers to one name is amazing. A cat that answers to two names is... well, is there a cat MENSA?

Now there is some real meat you can sink your teeth into. I'm on my way to walkinghotspot.com now.. See you laterrrr! Thanks for the great information!

I am pleased to see your report on the availability of the high speed Broadband Verizon network. I hope to see more reports indicating the strength of Verizon and AT&T networks. My T-Mobile contract is up in one year and I'll be ready to try another network if the coverage is good enough. Thanks for the input.

A number of recent postings have dealt with the necessity for surge protectors, autoformers and other electrical apparatus to protect RV's. Part of the need for these devices is the uneven quality of electrical supply in RV Parks. I've heard it, I imagine most of have heard it at one time or another. You go to a park office complaining about the quality of the electricity. They tell you that they never know what they are going to get from the electric company this time of year. Or some variation of this. They blame the electric company. While we do hear of "brown outs" occasionally during times of extreme electrical usage in areas with a strained grid, these are isolated and rare. I went to the office in an RV park in Valdez, Alaska with just such a complaint several years ago. And their response was the "blame the electric company" answer. Rather than accept that response and walk off, I was armed with information and I responded. First of all, my coach has a built-in monitor of electrical current. I know the voltage, amperage used and cycle of the electric I am getting. I knew that when I turned on an air conditioner I was using an amperage within the limits of the supply the campground should have been supplying. I could also see that the voltage dropped from the desirable 120 volts down to about 100 volts when I ran the air conditioner. This could damage the air conditioner if left running on this electric supply. I explained to the clerk at the desk that I was certain that my turning on the air conditioner didn't drop the voltage across the entire electrical grid by 20 volts! I assured her that this was an indication that the wiring within the campground was not sufficient to provide the promised 30 amps. The fact is that campground owners can put a 50 amp box on any post and connect it with any wire. It will only supply 50 amps of electricity per line if it has a wire of adequate size, #6 or #4 wire depending on the length of run. With a wire that is too small, the voltage will drop as the amperage drawn increases. It isn't the fault of the electric company, the fault lies with the campground owner. Why do campground owners do this? Many campgrounds were wired 30 or 40 years ago. They were wired with little regulation and frequently self done with an eye to saving money. If they have been upgraded since, many were likewise upgraded with no regulation and were done as cheaply as possible. Maybe they do it for the same reason that people buy cheap extension cords to run expensive equipment. In the old days, 30 amps probably seemed to be plenty of electric and owners may have assumed they could use a #12 wire (sufficient for 20 amps) because nobody would actually use all 30 amps or would only do so briefly and they could get away with #12. Who knows but the fact is that you will encounter campgrounds where the wiring is inadequate and you will not get the electric you are paying for. One hint may be when they want to charge you extra to use an air conditioner or a heater. I figure that their rate for 30 amps means I get 30 amps for whatever I want to use them for. If I am paying an extra $2 or $3 for 50 amps, I get to use 50 amps all the time if I want. It shouldn't matter what I am using it for. What can we do about it as consumers? First, I would like to see the major campground directories, Trailer Life and Woodall's add descriptors for the quality of electric (I'd like to see the same for wi-fi). This could be as simple as a code E:0 (for NO) does not meet electrical code, E:X (for excellent) for meets electrical code. Once these ratings were published there would be a strong economic reason for campgrounds to meet electrical codes. I suppose we could ask that all campground owners have an electrical inspection certificate posted in their office like elevator inspection certificates! There is something for the legislative arm of FMCA to work on. Second, inform the campground owner (not just a clerk) when you find a sub-standard supply at your post. Be ready to show them your electrical meter readings. Do not accept excuses given above. Convince them that you know it is their problem and they should fix it. Don't expect that they will fix it on the spot for you. You might be able to move to a different site with a proper electrical supply. Or perhaps you should get your money back and go to a different campground. Third, contact local authorities, city, county or state, and complain about the problem. In many cases, the work has not been done by a qualified electrician and/or has not been inspected by proper inspectors. These are safety issues and when brought to the attention of appropriate authorities (preferably in writing) it is hard for them to ignore them. Once informed of the problem and its safety implications the liability for any accident passes at least partially from the campground owner to the authorities who have been informed. Finally, if you have to stay at a park for some reason, why not ask for a discount for sub-standard electric? Hey, if they say they are supplying 30 amp or 50 amp electric and sold you that spot on that basis they should give a refund if they aren't able to supply what they sold you. Most important, let them know they have a problem and you know about it. If enough people complain, they will have to start thinking about solutions.

Do you have Internet in your RV or do you use Wi-Fi when available at parks, restaurants and stores? What is the best way to stay connected online? This question came as a personal message to me from a new FMCA member. I am posting my answer as a way to offer up our solution to internet connections and to allow others to respond with their own ideas. Probably the best internet solution is to have your own satellite connection. You can put a big dish on top of your rig and get a direct satellite link anywhere you go... but you have to be parked for it to work... and you have to have a big budget... I checked satellite connection prices and the units with installation run about $4000+... And the monthly rates seem to be static at about $100 per month. I don't have that kind of budget and I'm not running a commercial operation so can't justify that kind of expense. Also, the set up when you want to use the dish is more time consuming. The dish has to search to find the satellite and then establish a connection. Not convenient for a quick check of the weather while stopped at a highway rest stop. So as you might guess, we don't have a satellite connection. Our own personal best solution is to use a combination of methods to access the internet. What works in one place may not work in another so we have: 1) cell modems, we use T-Mobile because their rates are lower (and they are slower than Verizon or AT&T), cell modems work on the go, you don't have to be parked. I can check the internet while driving down the road, even in some really unexpected places like I-80 in nowhere Nevada! The cell modem is our most useful and common connection, it seems to work almost everywhere. By the way, the Verizon and AT&T modems work at higher speeds but mostly in urban areas, you will likely find them running slower in many of the places RV'ers hang out. Their networks are getting more robust all the time but it is a slow process and they may never reach Yellowstone NP or Glacier NP! One big drawback is that we can't afford to use the cell modem in Canada. Rates for roaming in Canada are outrageous so we lose this form of connection when we are there and we sorely miss it. 2) wi-fi, we recently added external modems with higher power output and an enlarged antenna (see my post on the forum, Internet to go). Wi-fi is so much faster than cell modems that it is our preferred connection if we can get it. Since we have the cell modems we won't pay for wi-fi in parks unless the cell won't work there. The quality of wi-fi varies extremely from park to park. I don't see that changing any time in the future. Things will get better but you still find parks that have bad electricity so I'm sure their wi-fi will never be great. We pretty much ignore the wi-fi at restaurants, coffee shops, etc. When we use wi-fi it is usually in RV parks. 3) dial-up, we still maintain a dial-up account for those few places where neither the cell nor the wi-fi work. We use earthlink because it has so many local numbers available nationwide and we can get 800 service when necessary. We also like earthlink because it has a very effective screening process that has almost completely eliminated spam from our e-mail. We are encountering fewer and fewer places where dialing in is necessary. Still, I use the internet for all my financial activity, statements, payments, etc. so I can't afford to be stuck without service entirely for any length of time. When we started full timing almost eight years ago, this was our sole means of connecting. We got the cell modem about a year and a half later and about a year after that wi-fi began to become more common. What does all this cost? We are paying for two T-mobile modems, about $80 per month total, wi-fi is free when we can get it, the dial up account is about $20 per month, so we're spending the same $100 per month that the satellite service would cost, just haven't coughed up the $4000 for the initial equipment and installation. We could eliminate one of the T-mobile modems but since I went to Windows Vista, we haven't been able to link our two computers together for internet service through one modem. We used to be able to do this before I began using Vista. We could pass one modem back and forth but my wife uses her computer actively and she needs to be connected at will. We have both become quite spoiled, being able to use our computers connected to the internet in the RV. We now find it tremendously inconvenient to have to leave the RV and go somewhere to get internet service.

Well shucks SEAJAY, why didn't I think of that? I'll bet sailors learned a long time ago not to bend over in the shower!!! Salute to you sailor on Memorial Day!

Don, Your coach is six years older than ours so your battery maintainer may look different than ours. You mention that the inverter compartment is below your bedroom, ours is under the bathroom near our bedroom. Is the clicking coming from the inverter also? Is it only coming from the relay you mention in your first post? You mention a function for that relay that is similar to the battery maintainer we have. Our battery maintainer is in a compartment adjacent to the battery compartment and below our bedroom. The battery maintainer that I wrote of is a large bar arrangement with cooling fins. It has two terminals to the batteries, one marked chassis and the other marked add'l for house batteries. It has a third terminal in the center labeled negative. There is an adjacent battery maintainer lockout which looks to be a kind of relay, small square, with four blade terminals. Our manual doesn't mention the lockout but does say that the battery maintainer will automatically reset when it is over amperage. The manual does mention that the battery maintainer will click off and on repeatedly and then go silent if it can not achieve a constant charge (pulling too many amps trips the internal auto-reset circuit breaker). If your batteries are charging fully, then the battery maintainer wouldn't be cycling off and on unless the internal automatic reset function or circuit breaker was faulty. Now, here is another possibility. We just installed a new Xantrex Inverter and I immediately encountered a condition that I hadn't encountered with our older inverter. The new inverter has a "load sense" function. When load sense is activated, the inverter will switch from standby to active at intervals you program into the inverter. When load sense switches on and detects a significant electrical load it will stay on and supply electric to that load. If there is no load or only a very light load, it will switch back to standby and then back on to check the load again after the programmed interval. All this is going on only when you have no AC source, shore power or generator supplying electric. Here is the point of my mentioning load sense. After the installation of our new inverter, we were camped for a while. When we unplugged from the shore power, the inverter went into load sense function. Since we didn't have any major loads on the circuit it would constantly switch from standby to on, back to standby. I could tell this was going on because I was standing right next to the TV, VCR and other AV electronics. I could hear everything switching on, then off, then on and so on... It took a trip to Camping World where we had the inverter installed before I figured out what was going on. I took the inverter out of load sense (programming at the control panel) and everything was fine. Maybe, just maybe, this is the source of your clicking? Does the clicking happen when you are plugged in? If so, it wouldn't be the load sense function. If the clicking problem occurs when you are unplugged then I would suspect the load sense function. It would click off and on until there was a sufficient load on the circuit and then it would stay on (no clicking) until the load dropped off the line and the clicking would return. The clicking wouldn't come from the inverter, it would be other electronics being turned on and off as the inverter switches on and off over and over. Perhaps a malfunction in the inverter is doing something similar with the battery charging function? I'll be interested in the solution to your problem. Be sure to post your findings to us when you finally resolve the problem.