New Hitch and 5th Airborne Pinbox

We replaced our gooseneck hitch setup with a new hitch from Camping World. We had to go to a 25.5K lb. rated medium duty hitch to ensure it was low profile enough for our 5er to pull level or nearest to it. Our new pinbox had to be mounted in its uppermost position for even this to happen. Overall the installation went well except for the dragging our 5er electrical pigtail cord on the maiden voyage with the new hitch. The cord was easy to repair, but it reminded us that safety inspections and numerous stops en-route are VERY necessary when changing locations.

The new pinbox is a 5th Airborne with air-bag suspension. It totally takes out the chucking from 5th-wheel towing to the point you forget the trailer is behind you sometimes!

Our new hitch is a Pullrite Low Pro 25.5K Super 5th measuring 10.5" high above our flatbed so that it tows level. This is an easy hitch to operate once I became familiar with it. It is a whole different operation from a gooseneck ball hitch to a 5er hitch!

Fortunately we still had trailer brakes after our cord was damaged, don't ask me how?!!!

Our electrical cord is shown in the process of being repaired.

Here is the repaired & tested cord complete with new bungy (and added plastic ties) to suspend the repaired cord so that it does not drag on the ground anymore. Let's hope that is the last dumba** thing I do for a while!!!

Dave

Our Gooseneck Hitch

We are getting setup at our site at our winter workamping location in N. Ft Myers, FL. I took a few photos of our Gooseneck ball and Anderson Ranch Gooseneck Adapter.

Our flatbed truck bed is 42" high at the rear or 40" compressed with the weight of the kingpin on it. The distance between the flatbed surface and top of the kingpin is ~11" with our Excel 33RSE RT pulling completely level. Our pinbox is installed into the upper-most position possible.

Changing of the seasons

We are expecting our first frost of the year in NW Illinois tonight where we are Boondocking on the family farm. We have been waiting word of our pending winter workamping job in S.W. FL.

The many phase of Amateur Radio

I am David, KU9L. I was first licensed with call sign KA9EDP in 1979. My wife Sheila is KB9YYI. Our current phase of life has us operating as /P or /M 100% of the time. We are new full-time RV'ers traveling and working across the USA. I've always been passionate about working CW and weak signal VHF so it is no wonder why my ham radio activities work so well around operating portable QRP. Our current commercial rigs are only a couple of Yaesu VX-1R HT's that we use for family communications. I've always enjoyed building electronic projects all the way back to my Novice days when I built my first 250 mw rock-bound rig as a project in college. I've built a half-dozen Heathkits throughout my early ham radio years. As my 18+ year career in aerospace electronics progressed my ham radio activities crawled to a halt. I did build a Small Wonders Labs SW-40 cw transceiver in 2005 which is currently in our storage unit in Iowa along with many of my tools. We closed on the sale of our Colorado house late in the fall which stressed our ability to get everything into storage AND to make it to our winter workamping session in Florida in a timely manner. Shortly I'll document a few HF QRPp rigs I will be building from kits very soon.