RV mentoring a newbe

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Bobtop46

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 11, 2011
Posts
989
Location
Bronson FL
I have been considering mentoring a newbe, one at a time.  I am not sure how to get the word out or for newbes to find me in my local area or mentors to find newbes?  Would this be a good thing to post in the newcomers section?  I have work camped several times now and there is a need out there for this.  Any thoughts on this?

 
It would certainly be interesting. I often talk to people in my travels and sometimes help them out with widely varying results and often find it to be a waste of time. You can spend hours walking a person through why his generator has to run all day and his battery is still dead only to have him gasp at the thought of buying a proper $20 re settable circuit breaker over the too small 16 gauge inline fuse holder that gets warm in your hand. While you are doing that the guy across the road comes over and says his battery is dead too and then argues that his solar panel only needs to be out in the light of day and does not have to point at the sun in any way. His panel was mounted at an angle behind his pickup cab pointed away from the sun. Although his batteries were only months old he went and exchanged them at walmart and then told me "SEE, it was the batteries that were no good!) OK skippy, whatever you say.

I have also had people walk by when my panels are tilted and say "trying to save the world"? Not a clue and they will argue that solar wont work. They are walking around inside a $200,000 MH with flashlights and I'm watching a 40 inch LED tv with the furnace running all night. :)
I know that is all negative but I didn't even tell you my worst experience.  There are people who do appreciate it and I'm actually friends with a guy who I spent days rewiring and removing boogers from his RV.  He was willing to pay whatever it took when starting out but supposedly competent RV dealers did crazy stuff like bonding his sub panel. They also put a dinky little inline fuse holder for his nice Bluesky 40 amp MPPT controller!  Starlight solar in Yuma did try to explain to him that he needed a wiring upgrade in order to add more panels yet he would come back to camp and listen to the incompetent loudmouths saying Starlite was trying to rob him. When I met these loudmouths I realized they didn't know an amp from a volt.

The main loudmouth was all about gopower and said Morningstar, bluesky etc were all junk. His gopower controller could only do  14.4 volts so when I mentioned that his four Trojans want 14.8 volts regularly he scrapped the 3 year old Trojans for a cheap set of AGM that charge at 14.4 v instead of getting a better controller.  $800  for AGM vs $60 for a Grape 40 or $150 for Morningstar or Bogart etc. Brilliant.

Anyway, you are a good person if you want to help people out. I'm not into sewer hoses and climbing on their roof to tell them that the reason their wallboard is soft is because they have never been on the roof to caulk. Good luck to you and report back on your experiences as I'm sure you will have some whoppers.
 
Bobtop46 said:
I have been considering mentoring a newbe, one at a time.  I am not sure how to get the word out or for newbes to find me in my local area or mentors to find newbes?  Would this be a good thing to post in the newcomers section?  I have work camped several times now and there is a need out there for this.  Any thoughts on this?

I wish you were near me. We just bought our first class a and it can be very overwhelming!
 

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