Putting a cool RV Decal on your RV – Good, Bad, and the Ugly

September 9, 2017 by Marlan at Rv52 Leave a Comment

RV52.com needs an RV decal!

As the purveyors of one of the leading RV web sites (RV52.com) it is only fitting that our RV is adorned with our corporate logos!

So Sheri and I got this bright idea to order a rv decal from Signs.com and we were able to try them out. The one thing we WON’T be able to do while I’m writing this is to discuss how LONG the decal lasts, but I can at least provide insight for other aspects.

After a little bit (about 10 minutes) research we decided to get a decal from signs.com. They had several types of decals but we decided on an opaque decal that was in their automotive section.

We decided to get a 3 foot x 2 foot (36 inch x 24 inch) decal and we decided to get three of them. One for the rear and one for each side.

They weren’t cheap, but not horribly expensive either. I think we spent around 45-50$ each.

Once you decide you have to create the decal. Since we wanted 3×2, I had to create a graphic using RV52.com logos (I made my logo by using 99designs which I recommend VERY strongly).

To create a graphic with the correct aspect ratio, I used Keynote on my Mac. I’ll list the steps here without much detail:

Create a new widescreen Keynote file. I use a white background. It won’t matter.
Pick a page format with NOTHING on it.
Draw as big of a rectangle as you can on the slide. Keep the rectangle 3×2 aspect ratio. This you can ensure w/ Keynote.
Make this rectangle’s color the same color you would like the decal background to be. We picked light light gray.
Now draw whatever you want INSIDE THAT RECTANGLE.
When you are done, select everything inside the rectangle.
CTRL-C or Apple-C (copy)
Start up Preview app.
Go to the menu and select “New from Clipboard”
Save as a PNG – I believe PNG will scale better with less jaggies.

Using this graphic you can upload to signs.com easily.

In our case, signs.com warned us that we might get jaggies. But we took risk as we do not own the graphics SW to go really big.

We then ordered and waited our 2 weeks.

We received a tube in the mail which contained our three graphics.

Eventually, we got off our duffs and put on the decals.

The pictures describe this process better than writing.

A few notes I’ll put here so you get an idea of our limited learning of best practices:

Make sure you have ample time and a patient mind to do this.
It can be a 2 person job – but CRITICALLY – only ONE BOSS. Trust me on this one.
Be very mindful of the idea that it needs to be perfectly even. Straight lines is a good idea.
unroll a tiny bit of the adhesive backing at a time.
Go slow, smoothing as you go.

Anyway, soon you’ll see the TTT (Tiny Texas Tumbleweed) rolling around central Texas with our fancy decals.

Check ’em out

START YOUR DECAL HERE

Replacing your RV Blinds with a Pleated Day Night RV Shade

Last updated on June 20th, 2019 at 01:04 pm

August 31, 2017 by Marlan at Rv52 5 Comments

An RV window shade are a critical component to RVing enjoyably. RVing is unique because many times you are close to other RVers so privacy, whether day or night is very important. A well lit RV during the day makes the camper a happy place. Sheri and I discovered the pleated day/night blinds and they have been a wonderful addition to our Tiny Texas Tumbleweed.

Get yourself decent shades! Isn’t privacy nice? Decent RV window shades is a big deal when you are in your camper and you don’t want people to see what you are doing!

ORDER THE CUSTOM SHADES MENTIONED IN THIS ARTICLE HERE

Previously we took the Triple T (Tiny Texas Tumbleweed) out on its maiden voyage.

One of the things we found we really were not very happy with was the cheesy white aluminum blinds covering our RV windows.

Problems we found with the Triple-T’s aluminum blinds

The lower clips for the aluminum blinds never really hold the blinds in place. This makes the blinds fly all over heck when you are driving getting them bent up.
The RV aluminum blinds were bent up.
The blinds were cut to fit the window leaving a small gap that would allow a unsavory person to view into our RV at night.
The aluminum blinds never seem close all the way. As a result, I always feel that I didn’t turn the rod all the way enough.

Too many names!

As with most things there are two many names for the same thing. You will find most of these things to mean the same thing and I might even use more than one word to describe a blind.

RV blinds
RV shades
RV window covering
RV window treatment
RV shade screen – I think this is a very loosely used word.
RV sun screen
(others? leave a comment for me… love to hear…)

So the VERY first thing we did to get the Triple-T up and running with new RV window shades was to do the following;

Measure the windows (the pictures below will explain more).
- I would add an extra inch on each side of the window which adds 2 inches of width. If you don’t you’ll have cracks which people could see through at night.
- It seems wise to add an extra inch to the bottom to be sure it covers.
- We added an extra 2″ to the top of the window so that the “stack of pleats” could go above the window.
Order the shades. We order ours from Camping World. More on that later.
- Specialty United Shade RV Window Shades via Camping World
- Don’t get the pull-cord option if one is offered. Use the tension sliding system called E-Z lift.
- For the record – these are super hard to find.
- Buy the day night shades. We didn’t know exactly what day night shades were but they seemed better so we paid more and got them. See pictures to explain completely. Boy are we glad we bought the RV window shades in the day night variety.
- We DID
  - receive these RV window shades.
  - install these RV window shades.
  - and will vouch for these RV window shades.
  - replace 3 windows with RV window shades – 2 were identical and 1 was larger.
Take down the current RV blinds which will be a yukky rv window shade.
We took down the sconces. We think the RV looks cleaner and less crowded without them. I like that Sheri is a minimalist.

ORDER THE CUSTOM SHADES MENTIONED IN THIS ARTICLE HERE

When we received the RV window shades from United Shade, Camping Worlds supplier, they came in a very compact box and were wrapped in rubber bands. Since we received them very quickly, I’m nearly 100% sure they were made in the United States rather than China. I think that is worth something.

Here the basic steps to installing these RV window shades. Please refer to the pictures below to help explain what I’m writing.

Using the attached screws, attach the RV window shade mounting brackets a couple of inches above the window and 3-4 inches in from each end.
- The instructions from United Shade aren’t too bad at showing this.
- I was hesitant to use the screws but the RV wall material seems more solid than you would think to hold the shades. The shades are very light weight.
- Look at your pleat stack to see how high above the window you want to mount.
Clip the shades into the mounting brackets. You sort of scoop up from bottom rear to front and rotate the rear of the blinds up into the bracket. This sentence won’t make any sense until you do it once.
- HINT: Try putting the bracket onto the blind BEFORE you put it up so you see how it works.
Go ahead and take the little plastic round do-hickeys and pull them out along the string until they get to the knot in the end. Do this for each side.
Now hold each do-hickey straight down from the rv window shades lower slider rod.
Put a little tension on each doohickey. Not too much as not too much is needed.
Have your better half slide the shades up and down and tell you “that tension is about right”.
Then put a screw in each round do-hickey to keep it in place and have a decent amount of tension.

Here are some fun notes on these tension style rv window shades:

I love these day nigh shades.
Be gentle with the tension strings they will wear out.
You can restring them… if you hate yourself. Likely you will be quite happy spending another $50 (or more) for a new shade rather than torture yourself with a restringing project.
The pleats will get a little uneven. But they will get even too. You’ll see. But I think they look sharp no matter what.

ORDER THE CUSTOM SHADES MENTIONED IN THIS ARTICLE HERE

Check out the pictures below.

Please leave comments with any of your RV window shade installation notes. This is how I did it and I’m no craftsperson.

ORDER THE CUSTOM SHADES MENTIONED IN THIS ARTICLE HERE

Cleaning your RV – RV52.com personal experience

Last updated on August 21st, 2017 at 08:32 pm

August 15, 2017 by Marlan at Rv52 Leave a Comment

Travel Trailer RV Showing Typical Dirt and Grime on Side of RV

The Tiny Texas Tumbleweed (TTT) is the RV52 world headquarters current RV. You can read all the particulars in the linked article.

But SHE was dirty. Real dirty. If you look at the picture above it had a nasty, dirty, greasy looking grime all over the sides of the darned thing. And yes, it WAS worse where the air conditioner was dripping.

So we did what everyone does and we did a search on the internet to see how other people are doing it.

We also got REAL CLOSE up and put a little spit on our fingers and rubbed it. Oddly, it didn’t seem topical – which was a bad sign in my humble opinion.

So we thought… how hard can this be?

So we promptly went to Walmart and bought 3 different kinds of cleaners all saying that they remove mildew, black streaks and road grime.

The first stuff we tried was Camco’s Blue Bottle titled “Black Streak Remover”. I’m not even going to give you the link because I’m not a believer. It didn’t even make a dent in the streaks. The dirt laughed at us.

The next stuff we tried was Armor-All Gray Bottle titled “Tire and Wheel Cleaner”. Wheels seem like dirty things. Again, didn’t make a dent in the dirt at all. Nothing. Didn’t budge the dirt.

Next we tried the Armor-All Orange Bottle titled “Wheel Cleaner”. Now this stuff worked pretty good. It went on VERY similar to the way the foaming friendly bubbles called Scrubbing Bubbles goes on. This stuff DID make a dent. But still it was very hard going and it still left behind a little bit of the gray dirt. Even worse, it seemed to harm some of the decals.

We did try the Scrubbing Bubbles but that was not as good as the Armor-All Orange Bottle.

But this was slow going and hard slogging. After about 2 hours all we had done was in the picture below on a single side. You can see how far we got and you can see how hard Sheri was working with a course brush.

You see we also found out whether you use a brush, a rag, or a sponge made a difference too.

That first night, Sheri’s son says “just buy some of that cleaner called Purple Power and use my power washer on “remove flesh” setting”.

We bought, we applied, and we put the power washer on “argon laser mode”.

Nothing.

The power washer did NOTHING. NOTHING at all.

Then we started to cry.

What started out like fun work with water in the Texas sun was turning out to be nearly impossible work with way too much elbow grease required.

I’ll tell you what we did.

REMEMBER – Sheri and I are not paint & body people. So please don’t do this for yourself without expert paint & body oversight and advice. This is just what we did… you are on your own.

In a fit of frustration, Sheri went and tried our Bar Keepers Friend.

Praise the Good Lord. That Bar Keeper’s Friend took the grime off with the most predictability, least effort, and seemed to not hurt the paint finish.

I’m not going to butter you up. It was still a bunch of work. But we were able to shine up the TTT and feel pretty good about the old girl being seen in public.

Then we found a finish that even helped rid the grime just one step more and that was the icing on the cake: Nu Finish.

Love to hear about your cleaning stories. I sure hope it went better for you than for RV52!

Travel Trailer RV Showing Clean Dirty Line After scrubbing unit

Maiden Voyage of the Tiny Texas Tumbleweed

Last updated on August 30th, 2017 at 11:19 pm

August 6, 2017 by Marlan at Rv52 1 Comment

Tiny Tumbleweed Prepped for Maiden Voyage at RV52.com World Headquarters — Tiny Texas Tumbleweed Prepped for Maiden Voyage at RV52.com World Headquarters

I wished I could tell you that I am one of those guys who just does it all right.

I’m not.

Sometimes I have to make myself.

We washed the Tiny Texas Tumbleweed (TTT) inside and out. We put in a DVD player with WiFi capability. We charged the T-Mobile portable LTE WiFi. Sheri put in decorations, towels, and more. I checked the battery, replaced a fuse in the converter, we made the all systems (kind-of) were working.

But THINKING you are ready versus really using it… those are not the same.

But that isn’t the same (at least analogous) as going on the maiden voyage and wringing it out. Lets face it, $25B on an aircraft carrier and they still gotta wring out the “bugs” (see the vid below, just for fun, ok?):

So we took TTT (Tiny Texas Tumbleweed) down to the Bunk Haus RV Park and Cabins on Canyon Lake. This park was reasonable, not very fancy and a little aged, but no problem for us as Sheri and I are easy going.

What did we learn that honestly we should have known BEFORE we took her out on the maiden voyage?

What advice from my own prior experiences and writing on RV52.com did I ignore?

I sure would like towing mirrors. My GMC mirror just couldn’t see around the trailer. An extra 6 inches would have been very nice (Please limit the untowards jokes in the comments please).
Our key for our outside storage didn’t work. I’ll order a new lock and key. I have to choose between a 5/8″ and 7/8″ hole size hence the next bullet. I’ll buy one of these two lock sizes on Amazon.
Tape measure.
For that matter. Tool box. At least throw it in the truck.
HDMI cable for the DVD player. No HDMI, no box.
The shower on the QB816 Dutchmen is terrible. Not RV terrible, but terrible for an RV. See the difference? It has no lip. There was little to no caulk. It was unusable. We’ll fix it when we get home and shower at the park (yuk – you know what I mean).
We work on our computers – we love computer hobbying – which is why you have RV52. So we need little desk/tables.
A storage ottoman would be really, really nice. Otherwise it is hard to sit and/or work in the TT.
Over the door hooks to put our towels on.
Jacks for the front to stabilize.
Coffee machine – likely a Keurig good deal from Walmart) – which we are well versed with.
Window shades (from Camping World). Super important. We have found the pleated to be the most useful/easy to use shades.
Toaster oven. These would be an amazing addition. Like most other things in America, you can spend as much as you want. I picked a really high rated inexpensive one from Walmart.
The inside the RV 4 way level. I brought my big construction level, but I have the right level for the job. I should have brought that.

Most of the links above are affiliate links. That doesn’t cost you anything if you click on them and I wasn’t forced to recommend anything – it came from me.

I had a friend buy a brand new (not used, but new) Tiffin. He took it on 3-4 local-to-Austin wring-out trips and found lots of things. After about 6 months to a year he felt he could venture anywhere.

When we bought our Open Range so many years ago, we stayed in it for a couple of days and accumulated things to fix for the dealer we bought it from.

Used or new, go ahead and give it a wring out trip or two close to home. Trust me, you’ll find a list of things you forgot to test, bring, fix, or worse.

PLEASE –> Love to hear your “maiden voyage” stories. Just put it in the comments below. I’ll approve them as fast as I can!

Improve your WiFi reception at RV Parks economically

December 5, 2016 by Guest Author Leave a Comment

ubiquiti wifi nanostation for extending range to your wifi

(Editor’s pre-amble. This is a guest article from an RV52.com reader Dan Wilcox -THANKS DAN- about his real world experience. Minor edits by RV52 along with added Amazon links.

Dan wrote RV52.com due to some of my articles on managing the WiFi in your RV. He wrote a great article and I hope it is of great use to you. Please comment and share so everyone can benefit from his experience.)

Why I wanted better RV Park WiFi

A month ago my wife and I sold our house in Spokane, WA and hit the road in our new RV. Our intention is to live and work from the road for an entire year.

Ability to Work Remotely and the need for security

We work from home, so our computers are important to us, as is the security of our computer network. We were hesitant to simply connect our computers directly to any RV park’s WIFI for our connection, worrying about the security of our connection (editor’s note – very wise, very wise indeed).

My goal was two-fold; To put a firewall between us and any RV park’s WIFI, and to have the ability to connect to WIFI networks further away than our computers can see.

Solving the RV Park WiFi Signal Strength Problem

The rest of this article lays out what I did to arrive at what I feel is the best solution for RVers in similar situations. Here’s what I did;

After researching and discussing with several people, I ended up buying the NanoStation M2 from Ubiquiti Networks. It’s a fantastic and inexpensive product, at around $85.

Positioning the M2

You can either mount the M2 on the roof of your RV for the best results, or (like I did) simply place it near a window inside your RV, which is totally sufficient.

Connecting the M2 Cables

Here are instructions on how to connect the cabling of the M2 to your router; When you receive your M2, you’ll notice it has no power cord, as it’s powered over Ethernet (POE). This just means some of your Ethernet cables will run through a POE dongle that’s included with the M2. Here’s how the cabling connects your router, M2, and the POE dongle:

Cable1: Connect a cable from the Internet port of your router to the LAN port of the dongle.
Cable2: Connect a cable from the POE port of the dongle to Main port of the M2.
Cable3: Connect a cable from the Secondary port of the M2 to a normal port of your Router. (For example, ports 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5. Just not the Internet port.) The reason for this cable is, it allows you to log into your M2 from your laptop once you’re connected to your router’s WIFI, which you’ll need to do to change the M2’s WIFI settings from RV park A to RV park B as you travel.

The M2 Configuration Interface

The M2 has an interface allowing you to see all the WIFI networks nearby. The M2’s interface lets you connect to any nearby WIFI network. It has a nice interface that lets you enter the WIFI connection’s password, then save it as the default, so you only have to do this once, initially, at each RV park you visit. Then, when you arrive at another RV park, you simply change it to that park’s WIFI.

Tricky Configurations with your Router and the M2

My goal with my router, which is a Netgear Nighthawk (an awesome router BTW), was to use it both at home and in my RV. Therefore, I didn’t want to change ANY of my router’s settings for using it in my RV. My router is on the 192.168.0.1 gateway (not 192.168.1.1, which is how the M2 is configured when you receive it).

I had to change the IP and Gateway of the M2 so the 3^rd digit is a 0 and not a 1, to match my network. I made my M2’s gateway 192.168.0.100, the IP 192.168.0.50, but you can use different IP’s that make sense to you. Remember that you’ll use the IP address you assign to the M2 to log into it, to change the WIFI network you’re connecting to.

A few notes; The Ubiquiti Networks website has excellent support if you use their chat feature.

The folks at Ubiquiti Networks may tell you that you need a switch between your Router and the M2. That’s not true.

You may be tempted to by the NanoStation M5 instead of the M2, but I figured it was safer to use the M2 since the M5 has a 5 ghz signal which might not work with my wireless printer.

(editor’s note: The wireless printer would be on the Nighthawk’s wireless network completely unaffiliated with the RV Park WiFi and the M2.)

Final notes

The M2 was the safer route as it’s on the 2.4 ghz signal that works on all devices. Don’t by the Loco M2 as its smaller and won’t do as good a job at picking up WIFi networks further away.

(editor’s note: The Loco has a +5 km range, approx 3 miles, where the non-Loco has a range of 13 km, approx 7 miles. The price between the 2 types is about $40)

Lastly, the folks at Ubiquiti Networks told me that I didn’t technically need to use my router, and that if I wished I could simply connect directly to the M2 with my laptop(s), and that the M2 had an encrypted connection which offered sufficient security, but I figured it was best to have that added layer of protection offered by my router’s firewall (which the M2 and M5 do not have). Plus, I like the ability of having a router that I can connect printers to, tweak ports on, etc., so this was the best route for me.

Ubiquiti Products from Amazon

CLICK HERE IF YOU DO NOT SEE A NICE SET OF AMAZON SEARCH TERMS RELATED TO ubiquiti nanostation BELOW

« Previous Page
1
…
3
4
5
6
7
…
48
Next Page »