Recent content by wirenut

I've got a 2009 2500 Suburban. I went with the GMT900 so the transmission would automatically downshift when braking and on cruise control. This will be important if my wife drives it towing the boat while I am towing the camper. There is no AFM on the 2500s. The vehicle does a great job with...

With your first child on the way I wouldn't be spending much money on a camping rig unless you are quite wealthy. Babies are expensive. Camping with a baby is not fun. Your wife is going to need a reasonable vehicle to use to take the baby to the doctor, pick up groceries, etc. Get something for...

I don't get the prices either. I bought a new 2022 GMC C & C last year. Diesel, 4wd, crew cab, Knapheide utility body with tool drawers and a ladder rack. My all in price including the upfit was less than the gas powered Bison model. I even got 0% financing.

I've put a total of around 350,000 miles on 3 dually work trucks. All had service bodies and weighed 8,000 to 11,000 with nothing being "hauled". With a load of supplies in the bed I've been around 13,000 pounds. For many years my 2005 Chevy dually also carried a truck camper from time to time...

My 2009 2500 Sub does a great job. I often have my family of 5 and a dog in there with a 6,500 pound boat on the hitch. It will run interstsate speeds on cruise over the mountains. I've also used it to pull 8,000 pounds of flatbed and excavator thru the mountains of WV to a job site. It also...

My 2022 GMC cab (not cap) & chassis has a fully loaded service body on it. It weighs about 12,000 with nothing in the bed. I take it off road to off grid job sites. My last truck, a 2005 Chevy crew cab, would drag in the middle crossing a few water breaks. The new truck doesn't even though it...

The GM 6.0 is great. Or, go older and get an 8.1L. I certainly felt my 8.1 had a lot of low end torque. All modern trucks have about as much power as big blocks and diesels of the '90s. 100,000 miles is not "high miles"; that was in the '80s. I drove my '05 Duramax to 307,000. My 2009 2500...

This is quite popular in the US actually. Most motorhomes and a lot of boats use the engine to heat water for the "house".

This is a useless exercise without real scale weights. You need to weigh both axles separately to really know what you are asking the tire to carry. My guess would be your rear axle has close to 10,000 pounds on it.

If all you have is USB you can not power 12 volt lights. Does it have a 120 volt AC outlet? You could plug in a 12 volt power supply but that is very inefficient and cumbersum. It would make more sense to just use a 120 volt light.

2500 Suburban. I think a trailer smaller than 20 feet would be small, not medium size. Just about any vehicle big enough for the family will tow that size trailer.

If you use APRS then dual receivers allows use of it and voice at the same time. The Yaesu FTM-400 (and probably others) allow you to put the frequency the other band is set to into your APRS message. Then, someone monitoring APRS traffic can call you on that frequency if they want. If you want...

I don't know of any "off the shelf" camper that's made for those temperatures. I also think you might as well forget about a 1500 series truck. For a truck camper of any kind with a family it's just simply not the right tool for the job. Even for a camping trailer it's probably not what you...

I recommend you stay away from "cheap" hand held radios if you're meaning the sub-$50 Chinese variety. Yes, they are cheap but they are so inferior to a Yaesu, Icom, Kenwood, or Alinco in every way,. I wonder how many people decided to get into ham radio with a Chinese hand held and were so...

I have no experience with it. I do keep up with "local" repeaters and VHF/UHF around VA and WV. There is very little DSTAR infrastructure here. I can only think of maybe 2 repeaters in about 100 mile radius of my house which is my regular area of travel. This includes western VA and eastern WV...