Air Awning choice

A family member has one of these £10 from Aldi, collapsible. He lays it on the ground & rolls his awning on to it for moving around👍🏻

Can't help but notice in the videos they only show it being used with small 2.6 m awnings, which in the case of the Kampa offering is very light ? or at least our friends one is compared against our 3.9m Bradcot. 

FWIW, I find a little planning goes a long way to help. before you try to push / pull it through the rail make sure you have arranged it on the ground so it can feed in to the rail easily. I have see so many folk starting off with a pile of folded /tangled awning at the bottom of the rail that gets stuck when feeding through the rail and they have straighten / feed it in at the bottom too get it moving again. 

As for stability in winds, they are brilliant. I have only every had to fit the straps to ours once when staying at a coastal site. I also found the heavier ones are far better made which is why we chose Bradcot over the equivalent Kampa. 

looks like a very good idea, have a 4 year old kampa 390 air, not sure it has that eylet on the end, will have to check before i buy.

Apart from the weight of my Kampa air awning, I have the problem of the ally awning track on my Coachman having the rigidity of a Kit Kat foil wrapper. The awning bead will very easy get stuck in the wrong part of the track ie where the fabric bit should go. I've 'bent it straighter' a few times but it will still easily open the track out if I'm not careful. Never had problems with previous caravan's or awnings.

strange, i have a 2008 Coachman and my awning track is very firm, I know so because i grazed the caravan on a very unforgiving overhead branch whilst in Spain which closed the awning rail up, devils own job to get it open again but fortunately only the track was damaged, I give the track a good spray with silicone before threading through, found this helps, I also kid myself that is keeps damp from seeping through the seals, well it seems to work, no damp yet

An interesting YouTube video from The Trudgians on air vs pole awnings.

https://youtu.be/nGibcUJBWew

Good video, but unlike Dan the outcome came as no surprise, except how knackered one demonstrator, a seemingly fit man half my age, ended up.

Pity they did not include the reverse process and getting them back folded and stowed into the bag(s), again IME the poled would win  on overall time again.

I can get our Kampa awning folded (up in a ball) & packed away in its bag quite quickly  😉

I've just watched an air awning explode as it was being put up near us. It looked new and went with quite a bang!  (totally unusable)

We are in our 5th year of Bradcot Aspire Air use.

Key to successful erection is to follow the destructions. The first time we put it up the other half turned the pump off when it finished its 1st cycle, of 2. It deflated. We could have given up and blamed the awning.

The only difficulty Ive experienced when solo was that the awning rail was full of sealant liberally applied at the circus where the caravan was thrown together. Once cleared its a doddle to pull the awning through single handed. I stand on the caravan step to do so.

Last week we encountered a gap between the van and awning for the first time. We had tasked the teenagers with pegging the awning under the caravan as per the destructions rather than play on their devices. They didn't, we didn't check before switching the pump on. Didn't have any issues with the gap over the whole trip.

As per the destructions the awning corners are to be pegged under the caravan before inflating.

The destructions say the poles are for use in windy/storm conditions. That's the only time we've actually used them. The poles are pegged into the ground for that reason too. A very similar system to the Fiamma Zip awning we had on a MH for 9 years.

Its been an excellent bit of kit thus far, and long may it give us good service.

We packed it last week to half the size of the bag so it now takes up less room in the boot of the tow car, just have to remember how we did it!!

btw I'm in the same decade as one of you.