I have used Facebook as a journal of our travels for a couple of years, and I am migrating over to this format, as it is a little easier to post longer stories, and this will give the folks without a facebook account a way to keep in touch.

I will be posting a link to the blog on Facebook.

I still havent learned how to dress the page up, so the format will change a little from time to time.

  

These pictures and stories are a repost from facebook during last week. 




The gobb of wires



This is a project that I have been looking at for almost a whole year, and it is starting to mildly bother me. This white plate is a control for where the TV signal is coming from, RV park cable, or the antenna on the roof of the Airstream.... The antenna control is also a signal booster, and it really makes a difference in poor reception areas. The mess of cables are power wires, and coax cables in from the antenna and the RV Park, and out to the two TVs. When I brought this home, the new plate would not fit over the old hole because it was sized to fit the old power supply plate that had its connector places closer together. I have had the tools to cut the opening larger since I bought this, but I think that I must be afraid of starting this project that would be a permanent hole in a visible place. Perhaps one day this week I’ll bring the tools in the house, bite my lip, and give it a go.

All Done

I did this project today. I brought about 5 times the tools that I needed into the trailer, even the tool bag with the power drill, jigsaw, and sander. This was the first time that I had to cut the aluminum skin of the trailer, and I didn’t know how difficult it might be. The Airstream trailers have an aluminum skin on the inside, as well as the outside, and ours has a burl carpet like cloth glued to the walls up to the ceiling, and a off white vinyl over foam padding glued to the ceiling. The metal cutters that I have were just the tools for notching the existing hole for the wire connections. I also changed out the connector plate to make a later addition of a satellite system easier to install. I believe that my fear of the project was that I needed to use the jigsaw to cut the hole, and that there might be unexpected results.

The things that I find in the trailer, that get broken or pounded apart, amaze me. The twisting and flexing that the trailer does when we are traveling is incredible. I bumped the trailer tires into a curb in Kingman AZ, and we are still finding problems as a result. This is the event that tossed the dishes against the cabinet door and spilled the dishes onto the floor, breaking one of them. We have discovered that a drawer under the dinette got shook apart enough for the bottom to push out, and became nearly impossible to open. We also had the bottom of a cabinet push out because of the weight, and flexing of the kitchen cabinets. I visited the storage unit, and picked out and brought back to the trailer, some small wood clamps, and I now have the drawer reassembled, and loaded. The cabinet that the bottom punched out, is located near the floor, and is glued and clamped waiting to dry.

I know that I have other projects to work on, but I can’t remember what they are, and I’ll have to wait for Anne-Marie to bring them to my attention.

One would look at a silver metal trailer, and not realize the amount of flex that can happen, but I have noticed that the front door is hard to close if the frame is twisted a bit from not being level, and sometimes the kitchen counter can lean left in the front and lean right in the back. (That’s when the door won’t close.)