New preowned Itasca Sunstar owners, previous Suncruiser and Travco owners

[SLOweather]

We have had our 2014 31' Itasca Sunstar now for a couple of months. Before that, we had a preowned 87 31' Suncruiser for 28 years, before giving it away last Christmas to a homeless vet and his wife and daughter.

Before that, we had my parent's late 60s 21' Travco, which I had traveled in with them in my youth. My wife camped with her parents in their Winnie. So we've been motorhoming cumulatively for about 100 years or so.

I spent about a month exploring the workings of the Sunstar, and undoing just about everything the previous owner had done. Those are stories for other threads.

A month ago we went on a 10 day 1800 mile shakedown cruise, across California to Mesa, AZ, up to the North Rim, then to southern Utah, and back to CA.

We live in San Luis Obispo, CA,

 

[RVMommaTo6]

Welcome to the forum and congrats on your newest toy!

 

[J32952]

Welcome. Bought our 2017 SunStar about a month ago.  600 miles to bring it home, couple nights at local park to learn about and leaving this weekend to explore a state park. Between my wife and I would guess about 10 DAYS (vs your 100 years) LOL. 

 

[SLOweather]

By way of a little more introduction, I wrote a One Cool Thing article for Home Automation magazine 17 years ago, called High Tech Traveler. We did a lot of things to our Suncruiser back then that were ahead of their time: solar panels, rear view camera, mobile phones, inverter, campground network, satellite phone and Internet via GlobalStar, amateur radio including APRS, Street Atlas on a laptop, 2 GPSes, etc.

Our first rear view camera was a 12 volt DAK security camera. (Anyone remember how cool the DAK catalog was at the time?) I made an aluminum bracket to mount the camera inside the rear window. The monitor was a teeny little 4" monochrome CRT one. I reversed the image by swapping the horizontal sweep connections on the CRT deflection yoke.

Our first mobile phone was a Pac Bell IMTS. Limited channels, but, in the right conditions, really long range.  The farthest I think we ever connected was from Brianhead UT to an ATT terminal outside Las Vegas.

We installed 3 40 watt solar panels that were dismantled from the first Carrisa Plains solar plant here in San Luis Obispo, County CA. The panels were so expensive for the plant to buy, they concentrated the sunlight with mirrors. 30 years I still have 2 of them, and they put out their rated power.

Here's a link to the article if anyone wished to read it.

http://www.sloweather.com/blog/2018/181204OneCoolThing.jpg

 

[RVMommaTo6]

Thanks for sharing!