2012 Northwest Mogfest
The truck got a couple nights of use at the Northwest Mogfest last weekend in Sheridan, Oregon. There's lot's of reasons to attend, but one of my favorites is that you get a great place to camp with water, hygiene and food available, and it all costs you hardly any money. Even if the event didn't provide cool trucks, cool activities and cool people, it'd be worth going just for the camping.
Anyway, there's not too much to write about these days as all is going well and the Jeep is proving out to be a fine little motorhome. I took the microwave along for the first time and it worked correctly off the inverter, so each time I go out, I can decide whether it's better to have the microwave or the additional counter space (which will, in turn, depend mostly on how best to cook the food being taken). And I'm quite impressed with the 35-liter Dometic fridge we have. So far, it seems every bit as good as the Engles and ARB I've had. Seems a little quieter, and the temperature readout is nice. In any event, it's not a step down from the others, and I was worried it might be. (It got picked because of its size.)
Oztent might owe me some commission money, as a half-dozen people who came by were completely taken by the Foxwing awning, And I did, in fact, look brilliant when we got a bit of rain (first in a month) and I had the awning out and usable about 90 seconds. If the wind is calm enough that you don't have to worry about guying down the awning, the Foxwing is about as quick to get up as one of the roof rack awnings while having way more coverage. It's one of the things I like best on the truck.
A while back, someone had a sale on the "awning extensions" for the Foxwing and I bought two. I took one of them with me to Mogfest and put it up Saturday just to see what I had. It worked great, as it just zips to the main awning with a hefty nylon zipper.
The extension kit also includes two poles and guy ropes so you could add another six feet of width to your already-wide awning rather than using it as a sun/wind break.
It got a little cool Saturday night, so I fired up the petrol furnace. I'm bonding quite well with it now, after disliking it the first few times I used it. It still is ridiculously noisy for the first couple of minutes while it sorts itself out (sounds like a jet spooling up) and it remains intrusive when working at full capacity. But once you get things up to temperature, it's quiet and pleasant at maintaining a temperature. I still think that I'd prefer a thermostatically-controlled catalytic heater running off my propane supply IF there was the perfect place to put it, but there wasn't and I'm now happy with this setup.
Not too much else to report beyond that. All in all, a really trouble-free couple of nights of camping with all systems working as hoped.