Drive Away Awning for a Duetto

Hi there.    I know this topic has been aired before.    We are now thinking of getting a drive away awning for storing stuff in.  We have just been to York for a week and set up a Pop Up tent.    This has been OK for using when on electrics but we are thinking a driveaway awning may be better for when not on electrics so that your spot is kept.

Has anyone any suggestions as to what sort we should get for our Duetto?

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I have one of these for my harmony

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Fits really well and the rail on your duetto should be the same height as my Harmony, takes about 10 min to put up after the first try, great full head height throughout too. Only down side is the poles are heavy but its stood up to gale force winds when some of the "dome" style on site with the flexible poles gave up and snapped poles.

Happy hunting :-)

Hi - we just bought a Dorema Challenger for our Duetto but not a total success so I'd probably advise you to avoid.  The actual awning is a great space and is very robust - stood up to high winds and heavy rain really well last week.  But there is a BUT - the tunnel section is really deep, which in theory gives you lots of storage space between the awning and the van but this is also what gave us a problem .....  We found that when we fitted it on to our Fiamma awning using connecting webbing and figure of eight it either sags down or, if we move the awning further from the van to get tension right the sides don't meet the van.  This is partly because the channel on the Fiamma casing is lower than the back pole of the awning.  So, with hindsight (... a wonderful thing!!) not a brilliant buy and the ones people have suggested look loads better.  We have decided that we will probably have to have a new j rail fitted higher up the van to solve the problem. 

Hope you love yours as much as we love ours

Best wishes, Denise

Ps - yes, I know I should have checked with the forum first

Any pics?

Hi , I'm going to try to put some on tomorrow :-)

We are newbies with driveaway awnings.   How is the tunnel part attached to the van, does it slide through the rail or what.  I know previously people have mentioned figure of 8's.  Our main concern is how it is attached when the van is driven  up to the awning.   Sorry if this sounds a stupid question.

Not a stupid question at all, so much to learn when you buy a camper as we have found out.

We have a driveaway and attach it to our Fiamma wind out which has a slot already in it.  The figure of eight is called that because that's what it looks like in cross-section, two round tubes joined together with a thin waist, one of which will slide along the webbing on your awning tunnel.  The other slides along a strip of Kador webbing which in turn slides into the slit on the Fiamma.

There are other ways of connecting if you don't have a wind-out and lots of YouTube videos to show you, just search in Google and you'll get a few examples.

As for driving your van back into position we put down a strip of rope along the near side wheels then 'all' you have to do is reverse the van back along the strip to line it up with the awning.  Another trick we tried last time was to lay down a cheap, flat tent peg (the ones with the angled top) behind the near side rear wheel so that you get the position spot on - works for us.

Hope this helps.
Ann
(Not far from you in Leigh)

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This was a Fjord 11 used in 2004/2005.  It was excellent and clipped to the Fiamma awning (Roli witnessed a real drunken evening in it!).  The current equivalent is the Fjord 25.  I replaced the original pegs with Caravan Club rock pegs.  I remember putting it up myself in the snow in December with a phone tucked under my ear as I was 'working'.

Peter

We will be new to using a drive away awning too, but feel its something we would like to add a bit of extra space, we have been looking at this vango inflatable awning, so we were wondering if anyone has had any experience with them, and if so what was there views.

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Paul & caz