Thinking about a Bus/RV

Back in 2008, when I was working on a mobile training team, I considered a Diesel pusher RV for a temporary home on the road.

I did plenty of research and discovered the Mecca of RV sales in Alvarado, TX. Sales were so depressed that I would have been able to purchase a $225,000 RV for less than $90,000.

I have no idea where the prices are now, but maybe all the recent economic changes have affected sales...
 
Back in 2008, when I was working on a mobile training team, I considered a Diesel pusher RV for a temporary home on the road.

I did plenty of research and discovered the Mecca of RV sales in Alvarado, TX. Sales were so depressed that I would have been able to purchase a $225,000 RV for less than $90,000.

I have no idea where the prices are now, but maybe all the recent economic changes have affected sales...

Sure did. Drove them up.

@weilke has it right. Demand for RVs skyrocketed in 2020. We were lucky to get the RV we got at the price we got it, but it was hard to find good deals on good RVs.

We didn't even bother looking at brand new ones. But you got me curious, so I took a look. That same dealer is advertising about 25% off list price as their average discount.
 
I consider your desired future with the Tesla Cybertruck hauling an RV to be a dystopian world personally, but hey. :)

Hey, you can still drive your diesel-guzzler all ya want. :)

I understand your desire to not spend more miles on an interstate after your previous life as a semi truck driver, and wanting to keep up with your passion of flying. Sort of the reverse of my situation, where I'm fairly burned out on flying after 13 years of a schedule, the weather seemingly always being bad, etc. etc.

With that said, I'd also submit to you that RVing (and I will say that I think this is especially the case for a proper motorhome as opposed to towing a travel trailer) makes the journey itself quite enjoyable with the family. The family is able to get up and walk around while we're driving, we can change places, make and eat lunch, do things besides sit strapped into a seat pretty much unable to move. Granted, I can't as the driver, but the fact that everyone else can makes it really enjoyable for all of us.

I'm finding some things interesting about the combination of our perspectives...

Somehow, I haven't really had any trouble with weather for family trips, business trips, or almost any other trips, despite flying a non-FIKI piston single. I don't really plan to be anywhere during January or February, but other than that, things always seem to work out. I do have a high tolerance for changes to the plan, though, which I view as a requirement for using GA for transportation. But, some of the neatest experiences I've had in aviation were the unplanned ones. I've seen some amazing places and met some amazing people because I landed at places I'd never intended to be in the first place.

Maybe your view is different because you were used to operating on a schedule with people waiting for you at your destination - That makes things harder. That's what I do for work, and I gotta admit that a recent 5-leg day where we had to deice twice *and* deal with convective weather was not particularly fun. That's also the kind of thing that you do when you have a high-performance airplane, because you expect it to get you places on schedule. I really don't expect that of the Mooney, but she still gets me there easily 95% of the time, and those 5% adventures are fun too so I just go with the flow. Frankly, prior to starting to fly the TBM my plane partner and I had started talking about getting into a 340... But boy, am I glad we didn't. I think it would have taken a lot of the fun out of flying for me.

Your comment about going and seeing things along the way kind of lines up with my feelings on unplanned diversions... And I don't mind at all seeing something from the air and then going to check it out on the ground, or specifically planning extra sightseeing stops along the way. In both cases, it's about the journey. Of course, it's also about the destination, but it's really about the entire experience of traveling this awesome country we live in.

As for strapped in and unable to move... Yeah. I've driven roughly 1.4 million miles, in all 48 contiguous states plus parts of Canada. There's not a whole lot of the Interstate system I haven't seen. I do still enjoy driving on the back roads, but that doesn't lend itself to getting to a destination. I'd still be the one driving, too... Though the idea of not having to stop for the kids to pee, and being able to have someone make me a sandwich or something on the road, is definitely appealing.

Aviation never worked that way for me. As much as I wanted to enjoy flying with my family, frankly it always was a pain as far as the actual flight was concerned. We got where we were going faster, but the en route part was never pleasant. And that's flying in some pretty nice airplanes - as much as the MU-2. Maybe we were doing it wrong, but we did it for roughly 8 years and it was really never much fun for me or for Laurie in any of the 4 aircraft we operated during that time. When I did some one-on-one flights with the kids it was more fun, and we also had some great memories from doing the dog trips as a family, going to Cabo, etc.

Interesting. The unpleasant parts of the trip, to me, are all the packing, wrangling, etc before we really get going. Once we're away from the house (or hotel), it's all good. I do think that the local flights are more fun, but that's because local flights are about fun whereas the cross countries are about travel. And Grayson enjoys maneuvers that Kelsey wouldn't. :rofl:

Again, I think the Class A (or a Class C could probably do similarly) makes all the difference in the world there, and a pickup of any sort towing a travel trailer for too long will get into the same sorts of issues. The key is the mobile home - as in, the home you're in while you're driving down the road, not the home that you tow behind you.

Yeah, if I were going to be driving the whole trip, that'd be desirable. The reasons I look at travel trailers are (1) it'd be a big upgrade from camping at Oshkosh and that's only an hour's drive from my house anyway, and (2) it's something that hopefully will be able to be hooked to a Tesla and autonomously sent on its way before too much longer. It's not the sort of thing I would want to use for an all-driving family trip.

But now you do have me thinking about renting a Class C (does anyone even rent class A?) someday... But most likely it'd be somewhere out west, and we'd fly to get there.
 
... Yeah. I've driven roughly 1.4 million miles, in all 48 contiguous states plus parts of Canada. There's not a whole lot of the Interstate system I haven't seen. I do still enjoy driving on the back roads,

I have close to a million on two wheels, but it's been almost all backroads. Motorcycles on interstates suck, it's hot, dirty, and with all of the buffeting from the trucks, it's really no fun. I plan my routes to pass through as few towns as possible, and if I had an RV, I'd probably travel the same way.
 
...does anyone even rent class A?
RVShare and Outdoorsy. Kind of the airbnb of the TV world. Everything from popups to top of the line Class As, some will even deliver and set up for you.

We’ve searched on both, but only rented off RVshare, even though many are on both sites. The reason for that is where we tend to go has more selections on RVshare...that could be location specific.
 
I'm finding some things interesting about the combination of our perspectives...*snip*

There are a few differences. As you noted, you have high tolerance for changes to the plan. A change to the plan for my flying meant a disruption to anything from 10-50 other people. While I only had to inform usually one or two contacts on either end, it's still a pain and has ripple effects. Nevermind the fact that I was also generally trying to get back home at some point. No, my flying was never about stopping and smelling the roses. If you have a high tolerance for changes to plan, that's one thing. That was never the case for me.

Also, your flying in the TBM was closer to what I did, but you're still talking about a different order of magnitude. Having 10-12 hours of hobbs time in one day was not uncommon, rather it was the norm. My legs often took me 2,000 nm from where I woke up. Or I'd do trips like Houston to the northeast and back home to Kansas. It's hard to do trips that long without encountering weather somewhere along the way, or at least having to plan for it. Sometimes weather would include 50-100 kt headwinds which, even in the MU-2, slowed things down a good bit (although it was rare to see <200 KTS GS in the MU-2). Now, I actually do enjoy the feeling of accomplishment in successfully navigating bad weather, an approach to minimums, etc. But it adds stress while you're doing it, especially when you're over the Bermuda Triangle at night in a 414 with no radar and you start to see the flashes of lightning in the distance, getting closer and more frequent (stay tuned to the publication of my book for more on this and other stories! :rofl:)

The equivalent is closer to how you drove the semi truck. I did lots of drives like that in college, but it wasn't every day for years on end like it was for you.

Incidentally, I think not moving to a 340 was a smart decision. Aside from the MX headaches (still nursing my wounds from those), the cabin class Twin Cessnas just aren't much fun to fly. Mooneys are great fun to fly, especially with a 550.

Your comment about going and seeing *snip*

And when you do those unplanned diversions in an airplane, then you're having to do something about ground transport to go check it out, and when all of that is done, you end up probably not saving much time vs. driving. Not a problem if you don't care about saving time and you want to have the journey about seeing things from the air (and then checking them out on the ground). For us, part of the benefit of family air travel was the time savings for going places further away. Cabo for Christmas was something that wouldn't happen with the RV.

The view when driving going down the road is completely different, as you know. While my kids are taking turns sitting up front looking out the window, just driving down the Kansas roads and seeing farms, watching the weather or the wide open plains (even wider and more open than our house), seeing the mountains that go hundreds of feet up above us through Colorado on the Eisenhower Pass or Wolf Creek Pass, it's just a completely different level of appreciation. My kids love aviation and they miss the MU-2, but they really thrive on the RV trips.

As for strapped in and unable to move... *snip*

After the first couple of trips, Laurie said "I knew we'd enjoy this, but I didn't think we'd enjoy it this much." We both had concerns about the longer time periods associated with the trips. We also have a running joke of Laurie "doing the woman thing and making me a sandwich" since 1) I've never in our relationship asked her to make me anything (and I'm always appreciative when she does) 2) She ain't exactly your typical girly girl. ;)

Interesting. The unpleasant parts of the trip, to me, *snip*

Well, local fun flights are different from XCs altogether and you can't compare the two. But after a few RV trips, I realized that flying trips had a lot of inherent stress involved because of all the steps. It goes like this.

1) Pack bags
2) Load bags into car
3) Drive car to airport (might be two cars, as I often went ahead to pre-flight the plane and pull it out of the hangar)
4) Move stuff (including car seats) from car to plane (kids are being disruptive and a pain during all of this)
5) Park cars, close hangar
6) Get clearance, take off, negotiate ATC (ok, that part wasn't hard)
7) Listen to kids complaining wanting to get a turn sitting up front with daddy and never understanding "Be quiet when ATC is talking" plus not paying attention to where their feet are and suddenly they move the rudder trim enough that the MU-2 feels sideways
8) Finally let kids up front, complain that I won't let them hand fly the MU-2 at FL250. Get where we're going fast so the sitting up front with dad is always rushed and interrupted by Delta saying "Light chop" and ATC giving me a new frequency.
9) Land (we'll assume no fuel stop), check in with FBO, move stuff (including car seats) out of plane and into rental car
10) Drive to hotel, unload stuff yet again and get to hotel

RV:

1) Pack bags
2) Load bags into RV
3) Hook up Land Rover to RV (note that all of these can be done the day before departing on the trip, and usually are)
4) Drive. Eat sandwiches, do school work, take turns sitting up front, etc. all during this time
5) Get to destination, put out slides and hook up water/electric, play

The real keys are that we aren't moving car seats a bunch of times, we aren't moving our stuff a bunch of times. When we get where we're going, we already have our house/hotel room/whatever and there's no moving bags around, settling in a hotel room, things like that.

Also, and admittedly this is more of a personal thing just because of how my brain works, but the long amount of time an RV trip takes just doesn't bother me while it's happening. Neither does being on the interstate, although the backroads are more fun. We do tend to plan our days to be shorter with the RV since the kids do need time to get out and play/stretch/etc. so that's part of it, but 400-500 mile days back-to-back aren't uncommon.

Yeah, if I were going to be driving. *snip*

I agree that travel trailers make sense for a lot of situations, the biggest one being if you're not going too far with them or don't have kids. The biggest negative for me in buying the RV was that I also had to buy another vehicle as a "toad". But we all really love the Land Rover so that hasn't been a bad thing, even if it needs an engine swap.

I think realistically your autonomous Tesla towing and self-charging going ahead is still likely far enough off in the future that the memory making time with your kids may be past if you wait that long. Or it may cost too much to be a viable option, compared with the used RV pricing.

But to your point about renting out west, most of the bigger places only rent Class Cs. RVshare does have individuals renting their Class As, depending on area. Personally I think the Class As are the way to go, but there is a premium you pay for them. We'd had a similar thought about flying out west (when we could fly a plane to do so) and renting from there. As the kids get older and more tolerant of the road travel, we may be able to change how we do that as we'd love to RV through Alaska and the like. Plus realistically at some point we do expect we'll upgrade from this 40' RV to a 45'er with bunks that will improve the sleeping arrangements and make longer trips more feasible.

Admittedly, the biggest problem with RV trips is that things that are far away are still far away, and time is a limited commodity (although I'm hopeful the future of WFH/WFanywhere dynamics change that some). We want to make a trip out west this summer, but San Francisco and Seattle are both an 1800 mile drive one-way. You really need a 3 week block of time (or more) to make a trip out those directions and properly see things. For Alaska, Juneau is about 3k miles just to get there.

We've thought a lot about how to do some of those trips, especially with Laurie's current (although constantly in flux) schedule and my limited time off from the day job. Some of it's just hard to do, but one of the cool things about our RV is that I could literally pick up Laurie from the airport when she flies home from work and we could get going right from there. With an on-board washer/dryer, she can even wash her work clothes first thing while we're heading down the road. The kids can legitimately sleep while we're driving somewhere (although at this point I'm the only one who drives the bus, so there's still limits on how far we go at once and the headlights are still not fantastic for night driving even after some upgrades... more work is required there... I may do some fiberglass work at some point and try to retrofit some better OEM headlights in the future).

When we upgrade to a bigger RV on a better platform (the Freightliner XC is good but it is lighter duty than some of the other platforms) and a bigger engine than a 3126B (C15 is my preference - @NealRomeoGolf will be proud) then it's also feasible to go faster when we're trying to burn down the miles faster to get somewhere further away. With the 3126B's 330 HP and the Freightliner XC's suspension (although I'm told much of this has to do with the steering box, which I can upgrade and may do at some point), 70-75 is normally about as fast as you can comfortably go and there are windy days where 62 is about it.

We'll ignore fuel economy because frankly, I just don't care about it.
 
I pulled a Nate and ended up with too many characters to put my entire response in a single post, so I have to split up into the one above and now this one. :)

Hey, you can still drive your diesel-guzzler all ya want. :)

This is getting off-topic, but the big reason I view it as dystopian isn't because I think such vehicles just shouldn't be available for those who want them, it's because what I see happening is the same thing that happened to manual transmissions. The market and government regulations will work to push things ever so much further in the direction of cars with actual engines (not electric motors) driven by real people being a thing the kids read about in history books. We already have a generation of kids who no longer much care about getting their drivers license - something that was a rite of passage, symbol of freedom, and badge of honor for most in my day (and for generations before) is now more of a "meh".

In other words, it's not that I want to deprive you of your preferred choice, it's that I expect I'll be deprived of mine. I'm very glad I bought my Ram when I did. No more manual transmission trucks again, and that's a permanent market change I expect.

I have close to a million on two wheels, but it's been almost all backroads. Motorcycles on interstates suck, it's hot, dirty, and with all of the buffeting from the trucks, it's really no fun. I plan my routes to pass through as few towns as possible, and if I had an RV, I'd probably travel the same way.

I agree, Bill, although I don't always practice that. In fact my friend and I are looking at doing an iron butt run in June, and, well, hard to do 1k miles in a day without using an interstate. Backroads are the way to go for sure to enjoy the journey most.
 
One of the problems we’ve run into with driving trips is a version of the inverse square law. The farther we go, the farther apart places get. You can do day trips, then you can do multi day trips, but then you start getting into multi-multi-day trips where the travel itself starts to become longer than the visit at your destination. At that point you have some choices: you can treat the travel as part of the trip (like Ted is able to do with his RV) or you can minimize the travel (either commercial, or GA flying like Kent).

With no kids anymore, we have some options. There have been trips where the travel WAS the trip (which direction do you want to go today?) There have been trips where a commercial flight cut days off a drive each way. There have been trips where we’ve gone XC and said, “OK, the idea this time is no Interstates.” Different life situations provide different options. For kids, though, you need to see world through their eyes for two reasons: it helps avoid a lot of stress, and the world is a completely fascinating place to them. Then plan accordingly.
 
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Good points, @Matthew. Laurie and I both enjoy driving and road trips, so that's part of what makes RVing work for us. Back in Pennsylvania we used to just hop on the motorcycles and go ride a couple hundred miles in whatever direction, seeing where the roads took us. We haven't done that with the RV yet, but we might do that someday. Actually, I like that idea. I'll add it to the list.

We also know we'll be doing commercial flights to some places. Our December trip to Playa Del Carmen via commercial was a great getaway for Laurie and me, Cabo again via commercial also will be a good.
 
@Ted you know you wanted a diesel with a Land Rover being towed behind it, just to keep the Land Rover feeling like it was in its natural habitat behind a tow truck!

LOL

:rofl:

You speak the truth! But I also want to swap a diesel into the Land Rover so it can tow... itself.
 
No, my flying was never about stopping and smelling the roses. If you have a high tolerance for changes to plan, that's one thing.

Of course, you could still start doing high-tolerance-for-change flying with your family now. ;)

I still fly that way in the Mooney, obviously not so much in the TBM. And I don't have 10+ Hobbs hour days in the TBM, because duty time limits. But I can certainly see how it'd be less fun after that... Kinda like how my longest road trip in the past decade was roughly Milwaukee to Cedar Rapids, IA and back. Generally, anything over 100 miles and we're taking the Mooney.

(stay tuned to the publication of my book for more on this and other stories! :rofl:)

I can't wait! :)

And when you do those unplanned diversions in an airplane, then you're having to do something about ground transport to go check it out, and when all of that is done, you end up probably not saving much time vs. driving. Not a problem if you don't care about saving time and you want to have the journey about seeing things from the air (and then checking them out on the ground). For us, part of the benefit of family air travel was the time savings for going places further away.

TBH, I don't do a whole lot of enroute diversions that are unplanned when we're trying to get somewhere. I may plan a stop at an airport with a playground, or make our lunch stop Wall Drug or something like that to break up the trip a bit, but it's never even come close to slowing us down to the extent that driving would be as fast.

The view when driving going down the road is completely different, as you know. While my kids are taking turns sitting up front looking out the window, just driving down the Kansas roads and seeing farms, watching the weather or the wide open plains (even wider and more open than our house), seeing the mountains that go hundreds of feet up above us through Colorado on the Eisenhower Pass or Wolf Creek Pass, it's just a completely different level of appreciation. My kids love aviation and they miss the MU-2, but they really thrive on the RV trips.

Absolutely! I do plan to do some road trips for that exact reason, but I'm going to pick and choose what they are carefully. I don't want to subject my kids to endless trips across Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio like I had to endure as a kid. :rofl: But you can be sure they'll get a trip through the Glenwood Canyon someday. Maybe we'll even do that one by train, I've never done a train trip!

1) Pack bags
2) Load bags into car
3) Drive car to airport (might be two cars, as I often went ahead to pre-flight the plane and pull it out of the hangar)
4) Move stuff (including car seats) from car to plane (kids are being disruptive and a pain during all of this)
5) Park cars, close hangar
6) Get clearance, take off, negotiate ATC (ok, that part wasn't hard)
7) Listen to kids complaining wanting to get a turn sitting up front with daddy and never understanding "Be quiet when ATC is talking" plus not paying attention to where their feet are and suddenly they move the rudder trim enough that the MU-2 feels sideways
8) Finally let kids up front, complain that I won't let them hand fly the MU-2 at FL250. Get where we're going fast so the sitting up front with dad is always rushed and interrupted by Delta saying "Light chop" and ATC giving me a new frequency.
9) Land (we'll assume no fuel stop), check in with FBO, move stuff (including car seats) out of plane and into rental car
10) Drive to hotel, unload stuff yet again and get to hotel

Yeah, this is why I planned the overnight stops on our last long trip to be at airports with hotels on the field so there was less transferring of junk. We usually only take one car to the airport, my wife loads the plane while I preflight (with my son's "help"). He hasn't asked to actually fly yet, but as of yet there's nobody for him to fight with about sitting up front (except mama LOL).

I certainly understand the "home is already here" aspect, but that's why I kinda want that autonomous rolling-home-that-meets-me-there. :)

I think realistically your autonomous Tesla towing and self-charging going ahead is still likely far enough off in the future that the memory making time with your kids may be past if you wait that long. Or it may cost too much to be a viable option, compared with the used RV pricing.

Agreed. I'm not counting on it by any means, but it is a nice fantasy.

But to your point about renting out west, most of the bigger places only rent Class Cs. RVshare does have individuals renting their Class As, depending on area. Personally I think the Class As are the way to go, but there is a premium you pay for them.

What aspects make the difference between A and C for you? Obviously there's more room, but is there anything else that makes an A worth the price difference?

Admittedly, the biggest problem with RV trips is that things that are far away are still far away, and time is a limited commodity (although I'm hopeful the future of WFH/WFanywhere dynamics change that some).

That's the big thing for me. There aren't enough places that we could go for just the weekend in an RV, and with my wife being a teacher, there's not enough whole weeks in the year that would make it worth having an RV, unless we were to pre-position it somewhere and fly there. I always say that the airplane makes what would be a weekend into a day trip, and what would be a week's vacation into a weekend trip. Our last big pre-Covid trip was to Seattle (from WI) for Labor Day weekend. And of course, pre-positioning the RV takes away at least some of the convenience, doesn't it?

We've thought a lot about how to do some of those trips, especially with Laurie's current (although constantly in flux) schedule and my limited time off from the day job. Some of it's just hard to do, but one of the cool things about our RV is that I could literally pick up Laurie from the airport when she flies home from work and we could get going right from there. With an on-board washer/dryer, she can even wash her work clothes first thing while we're heading down the road.

Does KissyJet let her take her time off in places other than home? IE, could she request to fly somewhere else that you've already traveled instead of flying home? That seems like it'd be even more convenient. I've thought about bringing the fam along, or flying them ahead, to places I'm going to be for work anyway. (Bringing them along would be when I fly the Mooney to recurrent... Borrowing the work planes isn't an employee benefit yet. :rofl:)

[quote}We'll ignore fuel economy because frankly, I just don't care about it.[/QUOTE]

I'm shocked! Shocked! The guy who probably hasn't flown a single in a decade and keeps moving up to higher fuel burns while muttering "MOAR BOOST" in his sleep doesn't care about fuel economy? ;) :rofl:

Someday we'll all sit around a bonfire talking about the good ol' days when gas was only $2.50 a gallon and we used tetraethyl lead air fresheners while our grandkids listen to yarns about our travels with their parents when they were little before we get onto our wheelchairs (mine electric and yours diesel, of course :rofl:) to go inside...

I pulled a Nate

Congrats and welcome to the club. ;)

This is getting off-topic

Isn't that a requirement these days?

but the big reason I view it as dystopian isn't because I think such vehicles just shouldn't be available for those who want them, it's because what I see happening is the same thing that happened to manual transmissions. The market and government regulations will work to push things ever so much further in the direction of cars with actual engines (not electric motors) driven by real people being a thing the kids read about in history books.

Yeah. Someday we'll have nobody who thinks it's worthwhile to learn how to wrench on a giant Pratt or Wright radial, or they decide to replace 100LL with 94UL or something else that won't work with them, and all the warbirds are going to fall silent too. :(

Good points, @Matthew. Laurie and I both enjoy driving and road trips, so that's part of what makes RVing work for us. Back in Pennsylvania we used to just hop on the motorcycles and go ride a couple hundred miles in whatever direction, seeing where the roads took us. We haven't done that with the RV yet, but we might do that someday. Actually, I like that idea. I'll add it to the list.

On our date-night to-do list is to hop in the car, and at the end of the driveway and every intersection thereafter where we have to stop, flip a coin. Heads go left, tails go right.

I expect it'll be a bit more fun of an exploration to go a certain distance/direction away from home first to discover more new places, but it's a start. I sometimes do this with my son in the back seat and let him just choose which way we go.
 
Of course, you could still start doing high-tolerance-for-change flying with your family now.

...

TBH, I don't do a whole lot of enroute diversions that are unplanned when we're trying to get somewhere. I may plan a stop at an airport with a playground, or make our lunch stop Wall Drug or something like that to break up the trip a bit, but it's never even come close to slowing us down to the extent that driving would be as fast.

The real difference here is that you do for-fun flights in the Mooney as well as go-places flights. Hard to do for-fun flights in the 414 or MU-2. Not saying it can't be done, but there's a mental (and dollar) barrier there.

Yeah, this is why I planned the overnight stops on our last long trip to be at airports with hotels on the field so there was less transferring of junk. We usually only take one car to the airport, my wife loads the plane while I preflight (with my son's "help"). He hasn't asked to actually fly yet, but as of yet there's nobody for him to fight with about sitting up front (except mama LOL).

Another thing to keep in mind is that if you add more kid(s) to the mix, this gets harder. And the fact that our three are close together (you could call them "Irish triplets") does make it harder.

What aspects make the difference between A and C for you? Obviously there's more room, but is there anything else that makes an A worth the price difference?

The best way I can describe it: The real difference between an A and a C is that with an A, you're driving your living room. With a C, you're driving a van/pickup and your living room is attached but behind you. This has a few aspects. For one, you get better square footage use of the vehicle length with an A because the driving area is also part of the living area. Rotate the driver and passenger seats and they're comfy recliners (for most anyway). With a C, the driving area is just that - a driving area.

While you're going down the road, what this also means is that you can more easily interact. You aren't divided (think like a cabin class aircraft, where the pilots are nearby but still separated from the passengers). It makes for a more inclusive drive. Kids can easily take turns up front without stopping to switch around. I find that we're far more interactive all together (or individually, as appropriate) with the Class A than we ever would be in a Class C.

The other consideration is that if you want a diesel and a heavier duty chassis, the Class A is the way to go. The Class Cs (and gas Class As) are built off of some light to medium duty Ford/GM chassis and they just don't drive as well, nor do they have the power/performance. The diesels are really the way to go.

That's the big thing for me. There aren't enough places that we could go for just the weekend in an RV, and with my wife being a teacher, there's not enough whole weeks in the year that would make it worth having an RV, unless we were to pre-position it somewhere and fly there. I always say that the airplane makes what would be a weekend into a day trip, and what would be a week's vacation into a weekend trip. Our last big pre-Covid trip was to Seattle (from WI) for Labor Day weekend.

We felt that way for a long time. Now that we're doing the RVing, it really hasn't been the downer on travel we thought it was. Granted, part of that is because I had been doing Cloud Nine and that made travel harder. Also, the Covid year has caused all kinds of weird differences that have made what we've done this year easier. I won't pretend that, if things go back to normal, it will be just as easy to do things the way we've done it. But now that the door is open (both in terms of the remote workplace and us understanding RVing and how much we enjoy it), I see us being able to figure out the details.


Does KissyJet let her take her time off in places other than home? IE, could she request to fly somewhere else that you've already traveled instead of flying home? That seems like it'd be even more convenient. I've thought about bringing the fam along, or flying them ahead, to places I'm going to be for work anyway. (Bringing them along would be when I fly the Mooney to recurrent... Borrowing the work planes isn't an employee benefit yet. :rofl:)

That's one thing we've considered exploring, but we need a plan first.

Oh, and just today I've thought more about some other fun upgrades for the RV.

@NealRomeoGolf will endorse the idea of swapping the 3126B for a C9/10 and building it up accordingly
Adding an Eaton 9/10-speed while at it
Change the rear from 4.56 to 3.73s to get the RPMs correctly matched
@jesse suggested adding water injection
 
The real difference here is that you do for-fun flights in the Mooney as well as go-places flights. Hard to do for-fun flights in the 414 or MU-2. Not saying it can't be done, but there's a mental (and dollar) barrier there.

Definitely. That's where I've gotten to thinking the Mooney is just about the perfect airplane for me right now - It's fast enough to get to faraway places in a reasonable amount of time - Heck, I'm pretty sure I can beat the airlines nearly anywhere east of the Rockies if I go nonstop - but it's also cheap enough to operate that I can just go poke holes in the sky sometimes and not care about the cost. That's a good thing, too, since in the Year of Covid that's darn near all we've done. I'd hate to have the plane just sitting in the hangar because it's too expensive to fly it.

Another thing to keep in mind is that if you add more kid(s) to the mix, this gets harder. And the fact that our three are close together (you could call them "Irish triplets") does make it harder.

Absolutely. More stuff, more wrangling/cat herding/etc. It's quite a luxury to be able to say "he's yours" and walk away for a bit to get something (like a preflight) done. I feel like it's going to be at least as big of an adjustment going from one to two as it was from zero to one!

And I'm afraid the Mooney isn't gonna cut it for family trips with more kids. Maybe when they're small, but even with one if we're taking bags for a weekend or longer trip I need to leave a little fuel behind. Once we get to the point where I can't carry 4 hours of fuel (3 for flying, 1 for reserve) I think that'll significantly impact the speed at which we get places - and that will happen when the total weight of the kids and their crap is around 250 pounds, so hopefully a ways away, but that's what has me looking at 310s and such.

Also, the Covid year has caused all kinds of weird differences that have made what we've done this year easier. I won't pretend that, if things go back to normal, it will be just as easy to do things the way we've done it. But now that the door is open (both in terms of the remote workplace and us understanding RVing and how much we enjoy it), I see us being able to figure out the details.


I hope that companies now realize that remote work isn't the awful thing they thought it was, and that many of them keep the ability to do it. If nothing else, it's almost like letting the employee have a vacation while still getting them to work!

Of course, I also hope that they don't think that's the new way of "vacation" and let people have real time off still. But, for example, I'd really like to be able to fly somewhere far away, work during the day while the wife and kid(s) do something else, and join them in the evenings/weekends.

Adding an Eaton 9/10-speed while at it

C'mon, might as well make it a 13 or an 18. ;)

An 18 would be overkill, splitting the lower gears is only useful for extremely heavy loads and/or awful terrain. But a 13 might help you some on bigger hills. How much does the RV weigh with all of your modifications? 40-50 I'm guessing?
 
It's quite a luxury to be able to say "he's yours" and walk away for a bit

You misspelled "divorce" ;)

C'mon, might as well make it a 13 or an 18. ;)

An 18 would be overkill, splitting the lower gears is only useful for extremely heavy loads and/or awful terrain. But a 13 might help you some on bigger hills. How much does the RV weigh with all of your modifications? 40-50 I'm guessing?

The 13 or 18 speeds don't really buy me anything but extra weight. The RV is actually quite light. This is a Freightliner XC, no tag axle (so it's a 6 wheeler), and Holiday Rambler kept things light. We tend to operate right around the max combined weight of 28k lbs.

The real thing I need to do is try to free up some horsepower from the 3126 that's being parasitically drained.
 
Came across this video today. A Jeep that had been a TOAD, but had a slight issue.

According to the news story it was left in gear (1st) and 4WD low. So the engine was turning about 50,000 RPM. There are a few NSFW words.

 
Came across this video today. A Jeep that had been a TOAD, but had a slight issue.

According to the news story it was left in gear (1st) and 4WD low. So the engine was turning about 50,000 RPM. There are a few NSFW words.


A friend of mine sent me the Jalopnik article on that. Given that it's a 2021, I'm betting the owners of it bought it specifically to flat tow (itself, a good idea) and then got everything right except mistakenly putting the transfer case in "4Lo" instead of "N". In most vehicles you are supposed to put the transmission in a gear (manual) or in Park (automatic) because you don't want some of the latent friction with the transfer case in Neutral to spin the output shaft of the transmission. Personally I would probably put it in top gear instead of in 1st gear for that sort of an issue.

I've never seen one of these newer Jeeps so I don't know how easy it is to put the transfer case in "4Lo" instead of "N", but my guess is they're next to eachother so it's fairly easy to do.

Incidentally, I feel for these people. Obviously they screwed up, but I think everyone who flat tows is afraid of this sort of thing happening. Fortunately the Land Rover transfer case makes it very obvious if you're in neutral, so it's hard to screw that up. I think it would be easier on some of the transfer cases I've dealt with on other vehicles. New to them car, rookie mistake, but something that can be done.

Where I laugh at people is when they hook up a car to flat tow and then just do it blatantly wrong because they don't research how to do it right. I seriously doubt these people didn't intentionally put the thing in 4Lo.
 
A friend of mine sent me the Jalopnik article on that. Given that it's a 2021, I'm betting the owners of it bought it specifically to flat tow (itself, a good idea) and then got everything right except mistakenly putting the transfer case in "4Lo" instead of "N". In most vehicles you are supposed to put the transmission in a gear (manual) or in Park (automatic) because you don't want some of the latent friction with the transfer case in Neutral to spin the output shaft of the transmission. Personally I would probably put it in top gear instead of in 1st gear for that sort of an issue.

I've never seen one of these newer Jeeps so I don't know how easy it is to put the transfer case in "4Lo" instead of "N", but my guess is they're next to eachother so it's fairly easy to do.

Incidentally, I feel for these people. Obviously they screwed up, but I think everyone who flat tows is afraid of this sort of thing happening. Fortunately the Land Rover transfer case makes it very obvious if you're in neutral, so it's hard to screw that up. I think it would be easier on some of the transfer cases I've dealt with on other vehicles. New to them car, rookie mistake, but something that can be done.

Where I laugh at people is when they hook up a car to flat tow and then just do it blatantly wrong because they don't research how to do it right. I seriously doubt these people didn't intentionally put the thing in 4Lo.

I don't think anyone would do that to their own vehicle on purpose.

Lots of possibilities:

The are new to this thing and didn't read the manual.
They are new to this vehicle and thought they did it right, but didn't.
They know what they are doing, but got it hooked up then got distracted and forgot.
 
My vote is option 2 or 3.
 
Distractions are huge in the screwed up dept. Once I pulled out of my camping spot with the awning still out.

Sent from my SM-N970U using Tapatalk
 
Well. Today’s work is brought to you by the letter “f”.

I’ll let you all figure out what that stands for.
 
They know what they are doing, but got it hooked up then got distracted and forgot.

Saw that article too and I’m going with the above. They used 4 Low to creep it into position to hitch it up and forgot.
 
For those doubting which “f” word was today’s theme, here’s a picture of what I encountered basically first thing:

upload_2021-3-20_16-32-47.png upload_2021-3-20_16-32-47.png
 
Incidentally, I feel for these people. Obviously they screwed up, but I think everyone who flat tows is afraid of this sort of thing happening. Fortunately the Land Rover transfer case makes it very obvious if you're in neutral, so it's hard to screw that up. I think it would be easier on some of the transfer cases I've dealt with on other vehicles. New to them car, rookie mistake, but something that can be done.
The gear-up landing of the flat-towing world?
 
Came across this video today. A Jeep that had been a TOAD, but had a slight issue.

According to the news story it was left in gear (1st) and 4WD low. So the engine was turning about 50,000 RPM. There are a few NSFW words.


When I flat towed my Wrangler behind my class C, I stopped a few feet short of the ball. Made sure steering was unlocked, transfer case in neutral and then hand pushed the jeep up to ball and hooked up. Last and final safety check that it was free wheeling.
 
The video that dropped today, for those interested - this one focuses on the bathroom vanity remodel we did.

More on this weekend's cursing later...
 
The video that dropped today, for those interested - this one focuses on the bathroom vanity remodel we did.

More on this weekend's cursing later...
Just tell me the bolt wasn't from the engine...
 
Just tell me the bolt wasn't from the engine...

It was one of the bolts holding the water pump tensioner to the block. Unfortunately, the part that bolt goes into is not something easily removable/replaceable. Nor is it easy to get to. However, I can get to it well enough that I'll be able to get it out somehow with a drill, and then have to drill/retap to a larger size and probably helicoil.

It really surprised me that it snapped off, as I didn't even put much force on it for it to snap. Meanwhile, the bolts holding the air conditioning compressor to its mount I needed a 1/2" breaker bar with a cheater on it for the first few turns before they started loosening up and only needed the 1/2" breaker bar. I was hoping those would snap! Oh well...
 
It was one of the bolts holding the water pump tensioner to the block. Unfortunately, the part that bolt goes into is not something easily removable/replaceable. Nor is it easy to get to. However, I can get to it well enough that I'll be able to get it out somehow with a drill, and then have to drill/retap to a larger size and probably helicoil.

It really surprised me that it snapped off, as I didn't even put much force on it for it to snap. Meanwhile, the bolts holding the air conditioning compressor to its mount I needed a 1/2" breaker bar with a cheater on it for the first few turns before they started loosening up and only needed the 1/2" breaker bar. I was hoping those would snap! Oh well...

In my experience, older machinery is full of surprises.
 
Oops, actual video here:

 
When are you coming to remodel my bathrooms? :)
 
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