larcat

I fairness, we moved down from Chicago/NW Indiana 😉 We're picking up in Dec, coincides with an annual trip to visit family in Nashville, so works logistically 🙂

I'm jealous! Really beautiful area.

Thanks, appreciate the info and context!

Also in hill country is Guadalupe River sp. Place is an absolute little jewel. Hill country also has a LOT of Army Corps of Engineers reservoir campgrounds that often have nice views. Strongly echo all the callouts for Mustang Island. If you want to boondock, the national sea shore south/west of Mustang Island permits it and is beautiful.

Yeah, 100% on our short term radar, just not today 🙂 There's more than you would think, between National Parks (Big Bend for instance, you can't "boondock" but there are a number of park-interior primitive campsites you can bring a trailer to), state parks on the gulf shore, and National Wildlide Refuges! The difference in public lands was definelty something that took getting used to, moving down here though. Our primary immediate use is going to be gulf shore off grid camping. The awning is pretty mind-bogglingly expensive at 5k though, and the x23 has 400 on the roof. Back of napkin says a 400w folder + the roof solar should be sufficient. Per dc to dc, that's good to hear --- I like that it's off the shelf with the new trim (it's not really a new model, imho.) Long way of saying I think we're going to opt out of the awning for our build. Thank you for the info and thoughts!

So heard back from Oliver. There will be an external access port, and you'll just route your own cable back to the ecoflow itself. If you opt out of the awning, there will be one of three ports open. Maybe this is the same grommet they provide for stuff like starlink cables now? Importantly, no external charge controller is needed because that's integrated into the EcoFlow (which vibes with their published info.)

Can someone check me if I'm wrong here --- since the EcoFlow input port 1 handles both alternator in and solar in, the dc to dc port on the x23 should be able to take an incoming portable solar, and shouldn't need an external charge controller because they're integrated into the hub? You will need an adapter for whatever type of plug your solar uses to the dc plug though. Edit: I've got a call in with Oliver tech support and they're going to call back with details tomorrow.

Thanks for the context and pictures, it's appreciated!

If anyone's got any thoughts here I'd appreciate it. Right now we haven't optioned either the solar awning nor a second awning. We don't boondocks un our current trailer, so we don't have a lot of context there. My thinking is that: 1) We'll park when boondocking where the awning is going to be much more useful on one side than the other. 2) The solar awning sounds great but just sounds like something that would wear prematurely, and obviously isn't flexible. 3) A 400w foldable + the roof solar should be sufficient if there's good sun. We've got some time to nail this down and would love people's thoughts.

Thanks for the welcome all. We're really excited 🙂 Mike & Carol --- any tips vis a vis the Tacoma?

Welp, after first talking to Anita in 2021 and putting maybe 30k miles on the microminnie we ended up with, we paid for an X23 build slot today. We live in SETX and have been scheming for an Oliver for a while now. Did the factory tour 2 years ago. We should be taking delivery during our annual trip to Tenn. to see family. Decided to skip thr solar awning -- spider sense tells me we'd break it somehow. We'll catch flack, but we'll be using our 3rd gen Tacoma as a TV for a good while. No plans for mountains, and when we do we'll get a full-size. We live in SETX, and it is _flat_ here.

Usually when we've camped, I work from camp for at least a couple days so need my starlink working --- flagpole buddy has been great. https://flagpolebuddy.com/

Came here to post "thermacell", saw your post, don't need to 🙂 2 covers the two of us comfortably at a picnic table. We live in the middle of the swamp, so use em at home alot as well.

We're buying our first RV (a Winnebago Micro Minnie) on Monday, and if we enjoy it as much as we anticipate we'll be upgrading to an Oliver in early 2023. We're going to be living in it for about 5 weeks in June/July (so I hope we enjoy it!) and I'll be using Starlink to work from a state park. I'll post experiences here. I've got a flagpole buddy/pole and pole mount on order, and will be slipping the cable under the gasket of the Winnebago's slide out. Curious to hear about what people end up doing the cable routing in an Oliver. Hopefully they offer some sort of starlink cable routing as an option / preinstalled volcano mount maybe.