RV Park thoughts, suggestions & ideas.

[ronjhall]

My piece of Camp Fannin was part of Rifle Range #4. All that's left are some dirt berms they built up to make shooting over 300 yards level. The attached pictures shows the end of the biggest berm. At this location, I'm going to build a large gazebo. It's in a really unique position with an amazing view of the lake!!!

Eddie

That berm looks a lot more impressive from the top looking out at lake. It would make a great campsite. If you could figure out how to get a RV turned around to make it back to the other end.

 

[rox]

Eddie, For some readon I never got the impression that is was he toilet that flushed well, I always got the impression thar when you pulled the stell handle to flush, that the water was some how under pressure. It sure would be great if there were a professional plumber on TBN who could add in their expertice. In other words it was not so much the the toilet design but rather that the flush water poured into the toilet under great pressure.

 

[DUMBDOG]

There are commodes out there that are pressure assisted in the flushing. When the water is replenished, it refreshes the the air and when flushed the water is pressurized. They work very well.

I am not a professional plumber nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

 

[BillG_in_TX]

Danocheese,

You and Rox have a good idea to start a new thread on my internet issus. I think I have a working understanding on most aspects of what I want to do, but this part of it keeps changing and I'm not even able to understand the old methods.

Thanks,
Eddie

Eddie,

I wouldn't be surprised that by the time you get your park open, everything internet related will have changed. Right now, Sprint and Verizon are rolling out nationwide broadband wireless coverage. Look at this page http://www.sprint.com/business/products/products/map.jsp?map=Dallas_TX&mrkt=Dallas,%20Tx%20214 and you'll see that Tyler is not that far away from Sprint's expanding Dallas network. Yellow and gold are EVDO coverage areas (or soon to be) and green is slower (for now), but still faster than dialup. I'll bet Tyler will be orange within a year. (I have also attached a screenshot of the Verizon coverage map.)

Many RVers will likely have their own wireless card (or EVDO enabled cell phone) and account for about $60/month that will work for them at home or on the road. Coax and phone lines are "20th century" technology that I recommend you not invest in. I'll bet a single hotspot at your cafe, powered by a Sprint card and wireless router will be all you'll need. That's what I'm using now for my office, having broken my tether to T1's, cable and dsl. Sprint (unlike Verizon) doesn't have any limitations on bandwidth usage or number of users sharing a connection via card and router, and they encourage business use.

 

[EddieWalker]

Bill,

Thanks for your help.

One of the reasons I'm stalling on this, besides the obvious lack of knowledge, is that any effort I put into it today will be obsolete in a year.

In some regards, my slow progress has turned into an advantage with new and better ideas that I didn't have just a few weeks ago. The horse hotel and open dog run areas are now part of the master plan!!!

Thanks again,
Eddie

 

[gemini5362]

Eddie,

I wouldn't be surprised that by the time you get your park open, everything internet related will have changed. Right now, Sprint and Verizon are rolling out nationwide broadband wireless coverage. Look at this page http://www.sprint.com/business/products/products/map.jsp?map=Dallas_TX&mrkt=Dallas,%20Tx%20214 and you'll see that Tyler is not that far away from Sprint's expanding Dallas network. Yellow and gold are EVDO coverage areas (or soon to be) and green is slower (for now), but still faster than dialup. I'll bet Tyler will be orange within a year. (I have also attached a screenshot of the Verizon coverage map.)

Many RVers will likely have their own wireless card (or EVDO enabled cell phone) and account for about $60/month that will work for them at home or on the road. Coax and phone lines are "20th century" technology that I recommend you not invest in. I'll bet a single hotspot at your cafe, powered by a Sprint card and wireless router will be all you'll need. That's what I'm using now for my office, having broken my tether to T1's, cable and dsl. Sprint (unlike Verizon) doesn't have any limitations on bandwidth usage or number of users sharing a connection via card and router, and they encourage business use.

I am curious about your use of the sprint card for your internet interface. As I have said in an earlier post that is the one internet technology I have not had much experience with. How many computers do you run off of that router and what kind of bandwidth do you get. Have you ever tried going to somewhere like pctools.com and doing a check to see what the download and upload speed on your computer is ?

 

[BillG_in_TX]

I am curious about your use of the sprint card for your internet interface. As I have said in an earlier post that is the one internet technology I have not had much experience with. How many computers do you run off of that router and what kind of bandwidth do you get. Have you ever tried going to somewhere like pctools.com and doing a check to see what the download and upload speed on your computer is ?

I have four computers linked to the router, 3 via Cat 5 cable and one via 802.11g wireless. There is no difference in the throughput when I use the card in the router or plug it directly into my laptop. I am using the Merlin S720 card and the Linksys WRT54G3G-ST router. Here's a page with links to both pieces of hardware - Sprint Mobile Broadband Solutions - as well as a brief description of their network.

Speed depends on several factors. EVDO is faster than 1xRTT, and Rev A EVDO is faster than Rev 0 EVDO. The closer you are to a Sprint tower, the faster it is, and the number of people sharing a tower connection also impacts the speed. Dallas is currently Rev 0 (although I understand that Verizon is now Rev A here), so the upload speed is limited to a theoretical maximum of 150kbps (I think) and download of 2.5Mbps. Rev A ups the download a little to 3.1Mbps, but will dramatically increase the maximum upload speed to 1.8Mbps (a 12x improvement). But no one will advertise those speeds, because it will be nearly impossible to achieve.

I am about half a mile from a Sprint tower, and get in the range of 1.0-2.0 Mbps down and 100-125kbps up. The upload speed isn't a problem for our applications, but once Rev A rolls out, I anticipate that should jump up to the neighborhood of 500kbps. Another big plus for Rev A is that latency will be drastically improved. Again, that's not a problem for me, but it might be for gamers or VOIP users.

Before I switched to EVDO, I was sharing a T1 line in this building with another tenant, and I have to say that I can't tell the difference except when I go to upload a big file. Also, we don't experience any (perceptible) slowdowns when multiple computers in the office are accessing the network at the same time.

Here's the site I use to test the speed Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test and I have attached a screen shot showing some recent tests to different servers. The Sprint connection is "always on", but probably goes dormant when not being used. We don't even power down the card/router except on weekends. As far as I can tell, we haven't had any downtime in the four months since I switched. As I mentioned earlier, Sprint has no bandwidth usage limitations, and actually encourages sharing the connection by marketing the router.


edit: Eddie, to get this back on topic, here's a link to a $199 Smartphone - BlackBerry® 8703e - that has turn-by-turn GPS navigation and broadband internet access built in. You can use it by itself, or tether it to your laptop via USB and use it as an EVDO capable modem. I'll bet in a couple of years, this will be standard technology in all new cell phones.

 

[gemini5362]

Thank you that is interesting to know information. Eddie is going to have a lot more users on his system but you really dont have all users accessing the net at the same time. It might be worth his time to talk to sprint and tell them what he wants to do and see what they reccomend. I have thought about getting this type of internet but my home is too far away from a tower and we have several t1 lines where I work at so would not be worth while for me to go that route.

 

[BillG_in_TX]

Eddie is going to have a lot more users on his system but you really dont have all users accessing the net at the same time.

The point I was trying to make to Eddie is that charging for hard-wired internet service will be like putting in a pay phone at every parking spot. No one will use it. Personal wireless internet access will be as common as cell phones are today.

 

[gemini5362]

You might be right it might be more common in the future. But for now it is not that common and whether it catches on depends on how much it costs. If he is doing his wireing now the cheapest I have found cat5 e cable for on the net is 7 cents a foot. If you are right then he will have wasted some money. If the sprint or whichever system does not catch on then his wire is in place.

The problem I worry about with the wireless internet is even if it does catch on the bandwidth from too many users. Over the years I have noticed that my cell phone starts dropping calls, I have messages that dont make it through to me and I start seeing crosstalk. I have actually been on a phone call and had it switch to someone else where the tower switched the phones to the wrong line on handover. These problems went away as my phone provider switched to a new technology that handled more users. If the same problem happens with broadband wireless internet It might be handy to have good old fashioned wire to back up to.