The Anisoptera -- A Home-Built Camper

[Dugway]

In another thread, there was some interest in my home-built camper that has been seen at launches from Argonia to Balls, and everywhere in between. I am creating this thread to show some build photos and as a place for others to post any photos they may have of this beast.

The whole thing is made of wood. This is one of the sides sitting in the garage before attachment to the base.


This is the "basement" with a layer of solid insulation. All of the electrical and plumbing (black, gray, and fresh water tanks), is under the floor in a space that is also used to store everything that remains with the camper all the time. One of those central spaces is a full 12' long.


Here we've attached the front wall, the subfloor, and the shower pan. We were just hoping that it was light enough to lift and put in the truck bed before we attached the walls. It was.


We've installed the stove and flooring and the sub-walls, which are old cedar fencing from when we replaced ours with vinyl. We ended up using it in quite a few places.


Here we have the walls attached and the battery installed. It's in the bed of the truck. You can see all of the under floor storage access.

 

[Dugway]

The neighbors complained about us building an RV in our driveway, so we got the jacks installed and moved it to the side of the house. We had to sell our old camper for about a third of what it was worth to free up the space. Thanks guys. You can see here the back of the fridge.


It's starting to look like a camper. My original Silverado 2500 is there on the right. It has air bags installed from the old camper.


Here's my wife laying down the aluminized tar roofing, you can see it on the front clear over the curve and over the edges. Amazing stuff but VERY sticky. At this point one of the neighbors walked past and said "It's so nice that your husband is building a camper for you!" Needless to say she did at least half of the work on this thing.


We've got a primer coat and some of the windows in. We were very lucky how dry it was during all of this.


And the rest of the windows are in. We are almost weather proof at this point.

 

[Dugway]

The hatches are installed, along with the drip guards over the windows. The gun ports are the same size as the other windows in the wall, but we couldn't find any that could be installed horizontally. Yes our concrete is so bad that we had to put boards under the jacks to get it level. Yuck. You can also see the forward facing domes and the port hole in the bathroom. The jacks are made by a guy up in Kalispell. We had him install them on our old camper, but on this new one we did it ourselves. Wasn't too bad.


The kitchen is pretty much complete at this point.


Here's the bathroom, with sink and shower head just out of the picture to your right. You are standing in the shower pan, with a retractable plastic shower door behind you. Works great. The toilet clearance is quite tight, but it works for us!


Here we are on our first shake-down cruise. It was scary because we had only a vague idea about how heavy it would end up being. When it was finished, we headed down to the IFA with the fresh water tank and both propane tanks full, and it came out to 4030 lbs. I couldn't have been more happy. The old Silverado with air bags had no trouble hauling it.


This is looking up at the queen sized bed up in the overhang. The grand kids think we built this whole thing as an enormous play house. Here is Ellie "sleeping" so we can't kick her out.

 

[Dugway]

The Silverado was almost 20 years old, so we started looking at new trucks. I was stunned to see how much more payload the 2019 Ford F-350s had than the upcoming 2020 Silverado 3500s, so I went ahead and ordered one online. Yay for aluminum! Here it is on the dealer's lot, waiting to escape from the extended warranty sellers.


Unfortunately, when we got it home and did some measuring, we found that the cab was almost 4 inches further from the bed than on the old truck. If you look closely, you can see the box that we built on the bottom of the camper. We also had to find a local welder to extend the jacks by the same amount. It ended up working fine, but it was a stressful couple of weeks before we were sure it would go on.


It ends up fitting through the tail lights by about a quarter of an inch. I get the easy job of backing up, my wife gets to crouch behind the camper shouting instructions about maneuvering a fraction of an inch at a time. We always get it on, it's never easy. The new truck also has air bags, pulls the camper like nothing.


Just to prove we use it for other things, here we are with the rest of the family at Stanton Creek on Lake Powell. When it still had water.


And here it is almost getting hit by my Cluster Duck. The gun port on the other side has a foldable shelf that we use to hold a small air conditioner. Along with a small generator, it makes the middle of the day on the Salt Flats more bearable. We also have a 200W solar panel on the roof and a 200Ah SLA battery. We never run out of power. For propane we have two 20 lb. tanks. Fresh water capacity is 32 gallons, black is 16 gallons, gray is 21 gallons.


Finally, here we are Frank Hunt Field, the "normal" site for launching with UROC. We have occasional weekend long launches that we enjoy very much. Let me know if you have any questions. If you have any other photos, please post them here to avoid polluting other threads.

 

[jd2cylman]

Here’s a few I took at LDRS 38.

 

[Dugway]

Nice interior shot, thanks!