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 Topic: Took the plunge on a trailer tent
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04/4/2024 at 5:15pm
Location: London
Outfit: Lunar Cosmos 524
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Joined: 17/9/2015 Diamond Member 
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Quote: Originally posted by storeman_uk on 04/4/2024
...... The biggest problem to a newbie to towing is that it is narrower then the car which makes reversing hard. I'll eventually get used to that though. .....
Emmm, possibly not! Small trailers are notoriously difficult to reverse, little camping/garden waste type trailers all but impossible! It's not just the difficulty of being able to see them, the shorter the distance between tow hitch and axle the quicker they 'jackknife' and the harder it is to feed in any corrective steering.
There is a risk if moving too quickly that the jackknife is so severe you get contact between car and trailer, or electric cables/breakaway cable get strained as beyond their movement range, before you can stop!
Couple of tips, if you can't or can only barely see the top of the trailer in interior mirror or through rear window if looking over shoulder, put a couple of 'flagpoles' on the rear corners, high enough and bright enough to be easily seen. A second aid can be to put a couple of bits of tape on rear window aligned from your viewing position to better judge just how far off straight you are. Doesn't help much on the turn, but any assistance is a benefit! Needs two people really, you in the driving seat, another person to place tape when it lines up with a flagpole from your viewpoint.
Both the clubs offer training courses which cover reversing, may be of benefit.
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05/4/2024 at 11:41am
Location: London
Outfit: Lunar Cosmos 524
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Joined: 17/9/2015 Diamond Member
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Quote: Originally posted by storeman_uk on 04/4/2024
Yeah, the jackknifing has already been experienced. So far I have found that unhitching & pushing it is far easier than trying to reverse it into position :)
at Monty15, the flags is a good idea but to be honest, I think unhitching and pushing would be less embarrassing then people watching me try to reverse it.
Knowing that it isn't just me having problems reversing a small trailer makes me feel less of a fool. Thanks for the replies, would rather have these honest responses than people fooling me into believing it is easier than it actually is.
I quite agree, unhitching and pushing into place is probably the sensible thing to do on site/storage, but I've found need to reverse my caravan whilst 'on the road', I've had people in front break down at traffic lights and in queues etc., and needed to back up to be able to drive around them! Also quite often necessary to reverse in or out of parking bays at motorway services etc. Unhitching, pushing, re-hitching with all the jockey wheel, power cable, breakaway cable stuff is a real faff when queues of traffic are building all around you! Definitely NOT to be recommended if parked in the HGV area (which trailers are often directed to), with VERY impatient HGV drivers trying to keep to their tight schedules!
I have a kind of inbuilt 'phycological need' developed from decades of towing power boats and reversing them down slipways to NOT uncouple, and to reverse the whole outfit, last thing you want is a loose heavy powerboat runaway trailer on a slippery slope, so you just don't do it! 
That said, I usually unhitch the caravan at sites, and 'motor move' onto pitch, as it's quicker, easier and more accurate when you have to observe alignment with marker pegs. I'm also usually on my own, so no one to guide me with regard to obstacles and placement. Large caravans may well be easier to reverse, but you suffer total vision loss of where it's going on a turn, the inside turn car door mirror is full of 'caravan wall', the outside one, somewhere almost totally irrelevant! Reversing camera on the caravan helps, but pretty much everything between back of the car and what's beyond back of the caravan (camera view) can be a mystery! - reversing a trailer is an acquired skill, and maybe just a little guesswork!
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via mobile 04/4/2024 at 11:38am
