Hello from Maryland!

[Scott_Sauvageot]

Hi Everyone,

My wife, Wendy, and I are getting ready to look for our first RV, and are seriously considering a Scamp or Casita as our entrance into this hobby/lifestyle. We're avid amateur radio operators and want to use our TT as a base of operations for activating parks and other remote locations.

We'll probably be lurking on here for a while before we make our purchase, so we'll probably be asking a ton of questions and reading through the older threads to see what info we can find.

Thank you for welcoming us to this community.

Cheers,
Scott (KS3O) and Wendy (K3TBD)

[Mitzi Agnew-Giles]

If you aren't insistent on propane, you might check out the Lilsnoozy. I lurked at a couple of different RV forums for 12 YEARS! prior to choosing my Lilsnoozy.
Www.lilsnoozy.com
It is manufactured in St Matthews, SC. Some advantages are wheels exterior to cabin instead of interior, a dedicated queen size bed with generous underbed storage, and a very stable tow. It starts to get a little squirrelly around 85 mph, but since I've finally gotten a good secondary road routing around I 75 between Gainesville FL and Atlanta GA we won't be stuck in high speed traffic anymore. The other nice thing is our Snoozy's weight. We weighed it in at 2,430 lbs on a truck scale. We knew we'de have to buy a new tow and our Dodge is rated to 7500 lbs, so we can upgrade to bigger/heavier if we decide that is the way to go.

[Jon in AZ]

Welcome to the forum, Scott and Wendy!

A good place to start "window shopping" for trailers is the site www.fiberglass-rv-4sale.com. Check out current offerings as well as the archives. Don't know what your timetable is, but later in the year there are some rallies on the east coast, where you will see many makes and models in one place. Most can accommodate a day visitor. Some even have scheduled "open house" times.

Best wishes on your "egg hunt"!

Jon (former Marylander from Harford County and Loyola Greyhound '83)

[garycarolyn]

Originally Posted by Scott_Sauvageot

Hi Everyone,

My wife, Wendy, and I are getting ready to look for our first RV, and are seriously considering a Scamp or Casita as our entrance into this hobby/lifestyle. We're avid amateur radio operators and want to use our TT as a base of operations for activating parks and other remote locations.

We'll probably be lurking on here for a while before we make our purchase, so we'll probably be asking a ton of questions and reading through the older threads to see what info we can find.

Thank you for welcoming us to this community.

Cheers,
Scott (KS3O) and Wendy (K3TBD)

Suggestion on your search: We definitely love the propane option for fridge and stove so when we are out with no electric hook ups (which we prefer), we can go anywhere we wish. We power up the battery as we drive and use little electric power when camped. Good luck with your search. We love our Casita.
PS: my dad was a ham since he was 15 K2IW around 1920.

[ehoepner]

Scott, welcome to the forum, as a fellow Ham Radio operator, I ran an RG-8 from under the dinet to the rear bumper. Installed a two inch receiver on the rear bumper so I can install a flag pole mast that goes up twenty feet. Installed a power cable from the fuse box with a power pole connector to the dinet. Have an eighty watt solar panel installed. This is all on a seventeen foot Casita SD.

[WaltP]

Two great resources for used fiberglass trailers are the For Sale forum here as mentioned above and the Classified forum on casitaforum.com.
Both require registering but require no fees and both are very secure.
Welcome and good luck on your search.

Walt

[JBB]

Hello Scott and Welcome! We looked around for about 4 years. Even went as far as filling out an order form on both the Casita and Scamp. We finally decided in 2016 on a Lil Snoozy; picked ours up this past September and absolutely love it! We don't mind that it doesn't have propane as I cook outside anyway. That's just one less thing to worry about. We do have a generator for boondocking so we're not just limited to campgrounds with services. You have to consider what is right for you!

[Scott_Sauvageot]

Originally Posted by ehoepner

Scott, welcome to the forum, as a fellow Ham Radio operator, I ran an RG-8 from under the dinet to the rear bumper. Installed a two inch receiver on the rear bumper so I can install a flag pole mast that goes up twenty feet. Installed a power cable from the fuse box with a power pole connector to the dinet. Have an eighty watt solar panel installed. This is all on a seventeen foot Casita SD.

Thanks for the welcome. My XYL and I are considering either a Scamp or a Casita at this point. I'm leaning to the Casita Independence, so we can sleep without having to climb over each-other to get out of bed. I'd love to see photos of your ham radio setup if possible. I suppose that would be a new thread instead of here on the welcome thread though. I'd also appreciate any insights you could offer about your Casita, how well it held up, any positives or negatives, etc. I'd like to have propane, a good size battery bank, solar and a small generator to recharge batteries as necessary. I have a pair of 20 foot military surplus crank-up masts we could use for holding antennas. I even thought a portable hex-beam could go on one of those. I do like the idea of the flagpole style antenna though! BTW, you can see my profile on QRZ.

73,
Scott (KS3O)

[Scott_Sauvageot]

Originally Posted by JBB

Hello Scott and Welcome! We looked around for about 4 years. Even went as far as filling out an order form on both the Casita and Scamp. We finally decided in 2016 on a Lil Snoozy; picked ours up this past September and absolutely love it! We don't mind that it doesn't have propane as I cook outside anyway. That's just one less thing to worry about. We do have a generator for boondocking so we're not just limited to campgrounds with services. You have to consider what is right for you!

Wow, 4 years is a long time. I hope my wife and I don't have to wait that long to find one we like. To be honest, we were originally looking at something larger, like the Oliver, but realized it was outside our price range. I've seen the Lil Snoozy and think it's cute. I'll definitely include it in our evaluation.

Thanks!

[Scott_Sauvageot]

Originally Posted by WaltP

Two great resources for used fiberglass trailers are the For Sale forum here as mentioned above and the Classified forum on casitaforum.com.
Both require registering but require no fees and both are very secure.
Welcome and good luck on your search.

Walt

Thanks Walter, I'll stop by the Casita forum and look at the classifieds here. My wife and I are looking forward to a new adventure!

[Scott_Sauvageot]

Carolyn,

It's cool that your dad was a ham. K2IW is a nice callsign, and easy to send by CW (Morse code). If he was licensed in 1920, then he was most likely the first holder of that callsign. Alas, today, the signs have gotten longer, the coveted short signs are hard to get, and you have to hold the highest class license to be eligible to earn them. My wife and I love the hobby, and really enjoy using the radio equipment outdoors/remotely. Wendy and I have really fallen for the Casita but haven't seen one in person yet. I hope to remedy that in the near future. Thanks for reaching out.

Cheers,
Scott

[Mike Magee]

If you call Casita, they likely can refer you to an owner in your area who has agreed to show their trailer to interested parties. Same with Scamp.

[Scott_Sauvageot]

Originally Posted by Jon in AZ

Welcome to the forum, Scott and Wendy!

A good place to start "window shopping" for trailers is the site www.fiberglass-rv-4sale.com. Check out current offerings as well as the archives. Don't know what your timetable is, but later in the year there are some rallies on the east coast, where you will see many makes and models in one place. Most can accommodate a day visitor. Some even have scheduled "open house" times.

Best wishes on your "egg hunt"!

Jon (former Marylander from Harford County and Loyola Greyhound '83)

Jon, Glad to meet you. I'm a Harford County native myself. Rode ambulance with Company 8, Joppa Magnolia, and graduated from Fallston High School class of 1989. I now live in Scaggsville, just south of Columbia. My parents still live between Fallstson and Joppa off 152. My wife and I may just have to make it to one of the rallies. We can't wait to get started camping!

[Jon in AZ]

Originally Posted by Scott_Sauvageot

Jon, Glad to meet you. I'm a Harford County native myself. Rode ambulance with Company 8, Joppa Magnolia, and graduated from Fallston High School class of 1989. I now live in Scaggsville, just south of Columbia. My parents still live between Fallstson and Joppa off 152. My wife and I may just have to make it to one of the rallies. We can't wait to get started camping!

Cool! Edgewood High School '79. Fallston was just being developed back then, and I lost a few friends from the Joppa area to Fallston HS when it first opened. Dad worked at the Ballistics Research Lab at Aberdeen Proving Ground. Mom recently moved into a senior apartment in Silver Spring, not far from Scaggsville. Small world.

Have you looked at BC-made Escape trailers? They make several larger models. Prices, taking the currency discount into consideration, are a lot less than Oliver. Quality is very good by most accounts. Long lead time on new builds, though, and hard to find used.

You could start with a more-common used Scamp or Casita for a season or two to see how it works. Keep looking for the right used trailer or order a new one once you know exactly what works for you. Resale values are very strong, so there is little to lose.

Best wishes!

[ehoepner]

Originally Posted by Scott_Sauvageot

Thanks for the welcome. My XYL and I are considering either a Scamp or a Casita at this point. I'm leaning to the Casita Independence, so we can sleep without having to climb over each-other to get out of bed. I'd love to see photos of your ham radio setup if possible. I suppose that would be a new thread instead of here on the welcome thread though. I'd also appreciate any insights you could offer about your Casita, how well it held up, any positives or negatives, etc. I'd like to have propane, a good size battery bank, solar and a small generator to recharge batteries as necessary. I have a pair of 20 foot military surplus crank-up masts we could use for holding antennas. I even thought a portable hex-beam could go on one of those. I do like the idea of the flagpole style antenna though! BTW, you can see my profile on QRZ.

73,
Scott (KS3O)

My Casita is a 2002 which we purchased in 2005. We have made numerous trips of a 1000 miles and more over the years. Two trips to South Texas, Two trips to Tuscan, a trip to Whidbey Island, Washington, several trips to North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, plus covering most of the state of Colorado. The most expensive and regular maintenance is the tires, brakes, and wheel bearings. Keeping the finish up on the out side and then small things like the thermo couple on the water heater and plastic components going bad because of UV from sun at high altitude. There are some things that vibrate loose on the inside. With the solar panel charging the battery I get four years on a battery.