I found the forum after deciding to upgrade from a 24' to a 34' trailer. I still voted influenced because I found the Excella in the forum calssifieds.
It didn't affect my first purchase (I hadn't heard of you) but my purchase of my current unit plus the sale of my old one are entirely the result of Forum contacts.
I was a hardcore Airstream freak long before I came here, but this site undoubtedly helped me make a more informed decision when I bought my second Airstream, and continues to educate me about all things related. This forum is truly an amazing place, and I am very grateful to all the characters that make it work, and make it so enjoyable.
This is an interesting question. We decided on a BaseCamp without input from this resource. Unfortunatively, before we owned the trailer for two months, it was destroyed in a fire. We decided that, while we loved the BaseCamp, we wanted to replace it with either a 16' or 19' Bambi.
The guidance we were able to gather as a result of this forum system provided about 90+% of the information upon which we based our purchasing decision.
If the question is, "are the forums useful in providing buying information?" our answer is an enthusiastic "yes, you bet"!
I have had to reply with a NO as we've been looking for lots of weeks at TT's. Knowing nothing about them, we just started looking at anything available and asking questions. Coming from boating, we know there are good, better and best boats and guessed the same to be true with trailers but we didn't know one from the other. Found that salesmen were reluctant to discuss differences also! Finally STUMBLED upon an A/S dealer in the area and found the cabinetry and construction work we had been looking for! Cupboard doors didn't bend when we opened them. Didn't see the number of raw edges that we saw on so many others. Construction detail SEEMED to be much better on the A/S. We started limiting our search to A/S and have travelled much of our state looking at them - deciding what size, model, etc.. best served our purpose. Only two of us and we've pretty much narrowed our choice to the '07 International CCD - what a beauty! We will purchase in the spring as our weekends are absolutely filled through the end of November. To say we are anxious is such an understatement as we fill our time with purchases of maps, campground lists, Airstream books, Good Sam Club info, etc.... so much to learn and do and prepare but it's so much fun!
Hoping to run into some of the familiar names I've seen over and over on the Forum's pages - we will put miles on our new A/S starting next Spring. We are visiting campgrounds whenever we find one in the area - have seen quite a few by now.
I had to say NO as we had made up our minds after lots of searchin', lookin', and tire kickin'. We've read, talked, asked and studied to come up with our final decision and we're happy with it - hope we're as happy next year as we are right now.
I found this 5 year old thread today and at this point am the last person to vote. We has discussed some sort of home away from home after suffering the evils of bad motels and bad restaurants for years. We tried a camper for a month about 6 years ago. It was a disaster—low quality—so we returned it and forgot about RV's.
Last year I found that my wife had been regularly viewing the company website and hadn't told me. I'd rather she'd been viewing porn, it's cheaper. But we agreed to look at the various models at the 2 Colorado dealers when we were on the Front Range. We looked for and bought some books on RVing. In the meantime, I discovered the Forum and started learning about Airstreams. I discovered loves and hates about the trailers. Studying it all for about a month or more, I could develop some knowledge about the various models and their problems and benefits. When we went to the dealers I knew the right questions to ask and already had a good idea what kind of truck I needed to tow various models. So we had a pretty good idea what lies the salesmen were telling us.
In fact, I knew more about some aspects of the Airstreams than the salesmen did and I owe that to all the research I did, especially on the Forum.
I don't know whether we would have bought one without the Forum because that's not the way it happened. In fact, my wife wanted one and that had the most to do with why I'm looking at it out the window. And I can't deny that they are cool looking. But the Forum made it a lot easier to pick the right one for us and combining it with the right truck for all 3 of us.
This site should be mandatory research reading before anybody is allowed to buy a 'stream, Especially any used stream! Bought my '78, Then found this site and found out about relaxed torsion axles and the like. But wouldn't want any other SOB instead.
The guy I bought my A/S from gave me this web site and said it had alot of info boy I really did not know what I was gettin myself into I have never read so much in my life and learned a whole bunch of stuff to...SAM
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Your Friend Sam In (Southport) Panama City Florida Air#15607
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