@dra2120
We are a family of four, plus a dog, with a 2020 Alpha that we bought used in February.
Spoiler alert: My Alpha is about to look and function quite differently.
Being a family of 4+dog we don’t have enough room in our 100 series for personal gear plus camping gear. So, we needed some sort of trailer. Money doesn’t grow on trees so we figured we could budget about 15k for our purposes.
We started looking into trailers just for hauling gear, think Rock Box/RBX, etc. Then I decided that if we were buying a trailer I might as well try and get some creature comforts to hopefully make camping with the whole family more successful. That took us to the typical retail pop up tent trailer. All the reviews scared us away since the trailer wasn’t going to live solely on pavement/nice smooth dirt roads.
We then started looking into the MDC/Black Series campers. Obviously the BS trailers have a less than stellar reputation, but the soft floor camper seemed to be the right price as a way to determine if we would use it enough to justify something nicer in a few years.
We found a one year old Alpha locally for 8k. It had been used about 5 times and was mostly immaculate other than the travel cover. It is typical for that travel cover to decay over the course of a year if stored outside, even if covered.We bought the Alpha knowing that setup time wasn’t going to be short and that we were compromising in a lot of areas, but ultimately the chassis would get us where we wanted, it hauled our gear, and seemed to offer some ease to our situation.
Our maiden voyage went fine but the things are insanely loud in the wind. So many straps on the outside, coupled with not being super taut, and they are loud in wind. Setup and tear down aren’t terrible, but it’s not particularly fast either. First trip: success.
Second trip was a four day through a desert region of our state. By the time it was over the travel cover was officially dead. The zippers were shot on the cover (cleaned/lubed/adjusted) and the cover itself was threadbare. Couple that with the waterproof storage cover not being waterproof and a change was in order.
A new travel cover from the BS dealer is like $500. I can’t see that being an annual cost, but others have had the cover fail after a year so that wouldn’t work for me. A boat shop quoted me 750 for a real storage cover that would be waterproof and wouldn’t even quote the travel cover without seeing it.
So, 500 for a cover that would fail again in a year or roughly 1500 for a real cover and storage cover. But I would still have the less than ideal setup and tear down, and care/maintenance of canvas.
So, we removed the tent completely and are building an aluminum lid for the trailer with an integrated rack and using a quick setup ground tent. So, in the end, we could have gone with a cargo only trailer and saved size and weight. But, when this is wrapped up, we will be super happy with it.