Fantastic! That's good to hear that you are so happy with it. We have been thinking of downsizing lately into something with less rear overhang. I've got 3 feet of camper hanging off the bed of my truck and that ruins any sort of workable departure angle. I've even considered just buying a small Skamper or Lance 815 for off-road adventures and keeping the Lance 990 for long distance highway trips with the wife. We do love our 40/22/26 F/G/B tanks, though! I've explored the thought of getting a Bigfoot 25C9.4LB camper, too, with it's 38/32/22 F/G/B tanks. The problem with the Lance 815 is it's holding tanks (or lack of them) but I do like the lack of any overhang. I've been slowly conditioning the DW to use a different toilet system other than a black tank and so far, so good. She is slowly coming around to a portable toilet or a cassette toilet as an option. She used a bucket with a toilet seat the other day and I was very proud of her!
The benefits of the Northstar are very easy to see and I have actually walked inside one of their popups at the Louisville Boat and RV show. It was nice to have have that much headroom. I agree that storage is nice but we are currently paring back the amount of stuff we carry. We have switched to
Harmony House foods as one of our main food sources when camping and we have been cooking outside more and not using the 3-burner stove and oven as much. We are trying to go
"ultralight" for truck camping and only take essential items. Reducing our hauling weight is good but the overhang cannot be left behind. Hearing your experiences with the Northstar is really helpful. What does Northstar use for sub-zero insulation? Is it just MORE insulation? We do a lot of winter camping and this is important to us. Our 990 does great but lately we have been just sleeping in the bed of the truck with the truck topper on rather than de-winterize/winterize the 990. I have installed 12V tank heaters on all holding tanks in the 990 so that keeps the liquids in liquid form but it demands over 15A from the truck alternator. I recently installed the Renogy 40A DC-DC battery charger inline between the truck and the camper batteries and that has really helped speed up charging the batteries back to 100%. The 400W of solar on our roof doesn't help much during the winter months here in KY. We camped at Elkmont campground in the Smoky Mountains (no hookups) for 10 days and the 4 hour drive back to Louisville did not re-charge the batteries very much (hence the reason for installing the DC-DC charger). It works phenomenally well!
As for heat, do you use any secondary heat source? We just purchased a Wave 3 catalytic heater and I installed the gas plumbing for it in the camper. It does help quite a bit and is completely silent in operation. The furnace is just too noisy and uses too much battery.
Your truck and camper look awesome!
