I've had two instances where a shade in my Airstream Interstate broke and I was able to fix it. One was a rear shade, one was side. This is probably pretty basic stuff for most of the folks here but I thought I'd share it anyway.
The way the shade broke was that it would just flop at the bottom and would no longer stay up if you pulled it into a raised position. Something had broken. In fact, the string had broken off the plastic fitting at the bottom.
The pictures show the broken plastic fittings, both in the rear and on the side. One pic shows the old broken fitting next to a new one.
I emailed Specialty Window Coverings, a Division of Ascot Enterprises at "repair -at- ascotent dotcom" with pictures of what went wrong and they kindly mailed a few new plastic fittings. (Thank you Mindi at Ascot!)
The steps to repair are:
1. Unscrew the broken plastic fitting. (see pic)
2. Find the loose end of string coming out the bottom of the shade at the side.
3. Untie the knot at the end of the string (see pic) and hold onto the two ends (very important!).
4. Thread one string through each of the two holes in the new fitting. Tie them together in a knot.
5. Then screw the new plastic fitting, now with strings attached, back into the screw hole.
Voila! You should be back in business.
I'm an RV repair newbie, truth be told, and this was totally doable for me.