New Airstream first RV

[valmog]

Congratulations on your new AS...You'll love it. We got ours this summer and it was a few weeks before we were able to get the TV ready and take it out on the road...we did a lot of driveway camping though and still had a lot of fun!

We just got ours back last week from it's first trip back to the dealer for warranty repairs. Like you we were discouraged a bit by all the little things that went wrong and needed work, but the customer service was excellent! They fixed everything we noticed and even found a few other things that they saw themselves.

Hope you can get out and enjoy it soon...you live in beautiful country. We're in Portland, Oregon with a similar climate and we've been trying to take ours out at least once a month - our goal anyway!

-Kim

[Stubird]

This is the new dog friendly upholstery hope the picture comes through okay,
Thanks for the instructions. It is still confusing and I hope it works.

[valmog]

Looks like you have the same color that we do...I've thought about changing the light gray to a darker color as well - the light gray is bright, but not very practical for camping. Yours looks great!

[Stubird]

Here's another close up shot of dog friendly upholstery.

[Stubird]

If you want the fabric to be dog friendly, pick a tweed sunbrella fabric. The plain colours seem to mark if you scratch it. Sunbrella is the same fabric used on boats so it repels water and is easy to wipe clean. The light grey is nice, but is not practical for dogs or camping. I wonder if designers actually go camping when they pick colours and fabric for trailers. The rest of the trailer is so sleek yet cosy, my next project is to make new pillows a little larger, looking for the perfect fabric to give it a camping look.

[Road Geezer]

We bought our 27 Flying Cloud in February 2011. I agree with whoever said "use it right away." There is absolutely no better way to identify and shake out the "kinks" than to use it. In the year we've had ours--17 times out--I have found numerous minor problems, a door lock that didn't work right, a water heater that wouldn't start, ceiling lights that stopped working, a leaking water tank, etc, etc. The majority were irritants and easily fixed, sometimes with help from members of this forum and twice by the dealer.

You cannot judge the reliability of a TT by the same standards you would a new auto; besides, if Airstreams were as reliable as similarly priced cars, what would we do with all that spare time ....

I've found this Forum to be a huge benefit; there are so many experienced, willing AS owners who share common knowledge and experience. It helps that there are always some who have the same, or very similar model as yours.

So, once you get through the "shakedown" period you'll be able to move on to the "improvement" period and join in on endless conversations about batteries, lights, tow vehicles, hitches, and all manner of gadgets and upgrades ...

It's a hoot; welcome.

Paul