Another Eagle has landed

[BuddyRay]

I was going to be cute and Title this post "The Eagle has Landed" but then I did a search on that phrase - and as you can imagine, it's been used a few times before

Got the call on Friday that our Eagle HT 26.5 RLS was into the dealer.
The good news is - our dealer is selling a TON of rigs.
The bad news is - our dealer is selling a TON of rigs and can't get to dealer prep ours till middle of the week.

So Saturday my wife is just bouncing off the walls excited - like a kid on Christmas Eve. So . . . . we drove by the dealership just to gaze at it.

Although I'm already up to a dozen posts here I guess it's time I "introduced" us.

My family bought a 14 ft Rolite Travel Trailer sometime in the 1960's when I was in elementary school. If you haven't seen a Rolite, it was a hard side folding trailer. Electric starter motor pushed stacking chain links through a channel to lift the top of the trailer - then you folded the four walls up, locked the corners, and dropped the roof back down. I swear once it was up you couldn't tell it from a regular aluminum sided TT except for a few extra seams. It had a bathroom, kitchen, dinette, AC, etc. When we would put it up, we would draw a crowd in the campground. You may have seen a similar design years later by Apachee that was fiberglass and not nearly as substantial.

My parents later upgraded to a 18ft model Rolite that we towed many miles including from Atlanta to Alaska and back during the '76 oil crisis that began as we started our return. I can still remember having to stop at every exit coming through Colorado because we could only buy 5 gal. at a time.

Rolite went out of business during that oil crisis, they were small, family owned and that trailer was expensive to build. But I was towing a TT with a learners permit at 15.

My wife grew up in Florida and her family was also big into camping and had a pop up for many years.

When I went out on my own I had a Dodge Van that I custom converted (Shag Carpet was big back then ). Before I got married I traded up to a full size Ford Econoline with an aftermarket "pop top" and self conversion that my wife and I honeymooned in.

As the family grew we mostly camped in tents out of that van. We had a 3 person tent for the wife and I and a two person tent for the 2 girls. We camped all over the east coast and did several long trips to the west coast all using tents.

When the last child went off to college we bought our own TT (my parents by then had moved up to a motor home). It was a 19 ft Sunline and we loved it. I towed it with a Ford Explorer equipped for towing. The kids were all like "We had to camp in tents growing up and NOW you buy a Travel Trailer . I made a sign for the back - we called it "The Empty Nest." We've been camping in that Sunline for 12 years.

I'm retiring at the end of May after teaching Entrepreneurship for the last 5 years at GSU. We decided it was time to move up a bit - the 19 ft trailer gets a little tight on longer trips - and The Empty Nest was starting to show her age.

So, after considerable research on both: traded the Explorer for a Ford F150 and the Sunline for a Jayco Eagle HT.

The dealer says he'll have it ready to do a Checkout on Thursday, and I don't have class on Thursdays - so we're going to pick it up and head right out of town on Friday for a Church Men's retreat where (luckily) they have RV sites at the Church Campground.

Although I've been Camping and RVing for 40+ Years, this is my first 5er so I'm looking forward to learning new tricks and making new mistakes (not really).

Have enjoyed my conversations on the Forum so far - you'll see me around a good bit I suspect.

[namusmc65]

Welcome to the Forum and congrats on the new rig from a fellow Georgian. Make sure you spend all the time you can on your walk through to discover any thing that needs to be fixed before you take delivery. There are plenty of discussion on here about the "PDI" before taking delivery. You can do a search and find those if you have not already. I'm sure you have enough experience to figure it all out. Enjoy!

[Mustang65]

CONGRATULATIONS on the JAYCO!!!

...and WELCOME TO JOF!!! The members here are GREAT!!! There is a lot of GREAT information to be found here. I am sure that you will have information and pictures to share with us... so please do!!

Don

[thecampingcat]

I really enjoyed your story! Before we bought our Greyhawk i was fascinated with a trailmanor pop up hard side tt..but Dawn said no to the toilet! I hope your ready for Marriott conditions! Eagles are like houses. Our class c is just residential enough, yet we still feel like camping. But if i could justify a tow vehicle i would have been spoiled with the luxury you are about how experience..I am excited for you both. Plus its not like there isn't room for your daughters..lol

[Stingray75]

That's a great story, thanks for taking time to share it. Congratulations on the new memory maker and, welcome to JOF.

[Jmooney]

Congrats and welcome from Colorado

[galakelady]

Congrats and welcome! Always good to have a new Jayco owner and especially good to have another Georgian. We've had our Jayco Eagle for a couple of months now and haven't camped yet! You're beating us to it. Let us know what "kinks" you work out on this first trip! Have fun and enjoy!

[BuddyRay]

Well, we're on the second night of our inaugural trip with the 26.5RLS and so far all is well. The ONLY thing we've found wrong so far is that there s a small flaw in the fabric of one of the dinette chairs.
I also still don't have a reading on the grey tank - but we've only put 2 showers on it and it's a 65 gal tank - so I'm just watching that one - Didn't want to waste 65 gal. of water to test that level gauge at the dealer. Of course I THINK this trailer only has one grey tank - but it has 2 buttons on the control panel and they both light up the empty button - so I'm still not sure which one reads the tank.

The F150 had no problems towing the unit through the mountains. That 6 cylinder EcoBoost engine just roared up hills and overall I got about 10mpg. Only slight concern is how the rear tires look. This F150 has the Max Tow package and has way more cargo capacity than the Jayco has hitch weight. The tires are inflated properly (I checked and the truck monitors pressure). But once hitched up the rear tires look a little down on the sidewalls like an under inflated tire looks. The trailer is almost empty this trip - and the liquid tanks are all empty.
The tires ran 250 miles to get here and stayed cool - so I guess it's OK - I'm going to keep an eye on it.

We're camped close to Ashville N.C. this weekend and had the afternoon off from the Retreat we were attending so we went to Walmart, HomeDepot and Bed Bath and Beyond and bought about $100 worth of misc. stuff - everything from a ton of 3M decorative hooks for coats and the bedroom to a small trash can for the bathroom.

Only a few "design issues" I would question - OK, more than a few :-).
1) WHY put the toilet paper on the bathroom door? I'll have to move it - we've already kneed it twice going in/out of the bathroom.
2) WHY is the holder for the shower spray nozzle pointing such that the shower can't really be used when it's in the holder. You HAVE to take it out of the holder and use it like a hand shower. How many of you have swapped this out? I'm thinking about one on a rod that can be moved up/down.
3) No towel rods in the bath? (I seem to have a bathroom fixation :-))
4) That much heralded Denver Mattress (I know this has been discussed in other threads) that thing is like sleeping on a board! The main motivation for our store run today was to get a 3 inch memory foam topper - but I hate to spend $250 on a queen topper when we paid this much for a quality RV
5) The furnace does a great job (it's in the low 40's here at night this weekend) but sounds like a tornado got into the rig. Seriously - we have a "whisper quiet" AC and a "Tornado Loud" furnace.
6) The fact that the battery compartment was designed to only hold ONE battery. Seriously? I know I can put a second battery somewhere else. And I THINK I might even get 2 sealed batteries end to end in the existing compartment (it's exactly 2 ft. long) if I do away with the box and just use a tray or something. But seriously - Jayco makes a HUGE marketing push around "Solar Ready" and then only give you space for one battery?
6) I bought the Ground Control leveling system - LOVE IT - but the front drivers side post really impinges on the propane compartment and it looks like it's going to be a b___h to get the right side propane tank out of there.
7) There are big gaps around the front jacks where they come through the compartment floor - one can of expanding foam coming up - mostly to keep the bugs out.
8) The side "Security Light". That thing is BRIGHT and shines straight out into the next 2 or 3 campsites - I wouldn't leave it on at night because it would irritate me if I was camped next to it and it shined into my rig.
9) The fact that the "Owners Manual" isn't model specific. And since it isn't, it doesn't cover things like the location of all the switches (see "Mysteries" below). Jayco should had a "General Manual" that covers all the common things and then an addendum manual for each model that covers all the model specific stuff like locations of switches, valves, winterizing valves, etc.

Things I'm really impressed with:
1) The overall build quality.
2) That little blue night light in the bath. How COOL is that!
3) The lights around the medicine cabinet (I'm still bathroom obsessed LOL).
4) The Ground Control 4 point automatic leveling system.
5) The furniture - love the recliners - went to sleep in one this afternoon.

Things I'm going to do next week:
1) that foam mentioned above.
2) Towel rods and a paper towel holder.
3) get my storage better organized - the "bins" I had in my old trailer are too tall for this one and I want to mount some plywood and clip crank handles, tools, etc. to it using garden clips.
4) Hardwired Surge Suppressor/power management.

Simplest but most valuable thing I've done so far . . . .
1) Sprayed graphite lock lubricant in ALL the rigs locks. They were all stubborn - they all work like silk now.

Only Mysteries remaining:
1) I can't, for the life of me, figure out how to turn the recessed LED light strips in the front cap on. They don't seem to have their own switch (or it's well hidden or I'm going blind) and they don't come on with any other switch. I didn't even notice they were there until I was here at the camp so I never asked the dealer. There is nothing in the owners manual about it. Any Forum members know the answer?

2) there is a toggle switch (just like the light switches inside the rig) in the front of the battery compartment, where it's very hard to reach. I can't figure out what it does (and NO it doesn't turn on the LED light strips LOL). Dealer thought it had something to do with the Solar Prep since it's right next to the plug for that but I traced the wires and I don't think the two are connected.

So we're having a GREAT time on our first run and enjoying the discovery and customizing process.

[hankb11]

Hi Buddy
The led's on the front cap turn on with the awning. The switch in the battery compartment is for the rear camera. Just did the walk thru on our 27.5 RLTS this week so it's fresh in my mind.