Author: nerdadmin

It has been a slow camping year so for us – real life keeps getting in the way.  However, we did get away for a week in April for the New Rattitude Rat Terrier Jamboree in Sweetwater, TN.  The KOA in town hosted the event and it turned out to be a nice trip.  We made some new friends and met a ton of great dogs that need homes.  The owners of the campground do a nice job at keeping the place clean and inviting – see more in the video below… 

I have been wanting to buy a pair of nice binoculars for a long time now.  My in-laws have these great binoculars made by Swarovski but the problem is they are $2000 for the pair.  And I have not had an extra 2K  that I could feel good about spending on a pair of binoculars that I would only use a few times a year.

Banggood.com reached out to me wanting to know if I would be interested in receiving some of their product in exchange for an honest review. So I went to their site, searched through their many products and decided to pick a pair of binoculars – just to see – so to speak. Needless to say I was very surprised to find that these $60 binoculars perform…not as great as the Swarovski pair but more than good enough for the casual owner.

I had my new GoPro Karma drone out this weekend and got this picture of our Airstream and Ford Raptor in the driveway.  The whole Airstream Nerds crew is represented – the car on the right is owned by Tyler.

We bought a new Lifetime cooler and based on our experience so far it exceeds or at least equals the performance of the Yeti coolers but at more than a third of the cost of their smaller Tundra 45.

I mention that it leaks around the seal in my video but I am only repeating what others have said in reviews.  I had the cooler full of ice in the back of my pickup for five days through all kinds of driving – including 4-wheel driving on the sand at 30+ MPH – and I have not had any leakage at all.

We used Mattress Insider for our new mattresses a couple years ago and more recently for mattress condensation moisture barriers (review video coming soon). We have been very happy with both experiences. The manufacturer has offered our friends 5% off their order by using this link http://mattressinsider.refr.cc/jeffreyg

Keeping your water system clean is a very important part of your RV maintenance plan.  At least once a year you should sanitize the water system in your camper or RV.  It is easy and cheap to do.  I complete this right after I de-winterize but anytime is good.  I do make sure that I have the hot water heater bypass on – I do not want to run the bleach mix through my hot water tank…just the lines.

I wanted a better table than the one we got from Wal-Mart many years ago so I went looking on my favorite online store – Amazon.  I found this one, read the reviews and pulled the trigger.  I could not be happier that I bought it!  Check it out…

When the winter finally relented with the under freezing temperatures I started getting our camper ready for the camping season.  I had three different things I needed to do to get the camper ready to go for the 2018 season.  First I had to make sure all of the devices that ran on batteries, most importantly smoke detectors, had new batteries.  Second I wanted to make sure the water system had all of the RV antifreeze rinsed out.  Finally I sanitized all of the water supply lines and fresh water tank.  This video shows the batteries and line flush.  I will post the sanitizing video in a few weeks.

https://www.amazon.com/shop/airstreamnerds

Recently we were invited to open an Amazon Storefront. Now all of the products I mention or show on our YouTube channel that I purchase on Amazon are all in one place for your review. Prices are exactly the same as on the regular Amazon.com pages but through our store we get a very small commission on each product you purchase.

Thank you for your support!

After reading example after example of the Goodyear Marathon tires having catastrophic failures on Airstream travel trailers I decided I did not want to have the same thing happen to me.  I went round and round in my head between the different options other owners have done – from new wheels with light truck tires to different brands of tires. I finally decided that I would use the Endurance models that are the exact size as the factory put on my trailer when new.  At the same time I added the Centramatics mainly as a feel good measure.  During the video I show and talk about the torque setting to use is 90 but after a couple of viewers pointed out that I was using the wrong setting I looked it up and was proven wrong.  Make sure you check your manual – I should of used 110 foot pounds instead of what I say/show in the video.