There is a point to this...keep reading.

Most everyone knows we went to the darkside and got a diesel pusher last year. I still love GMCs but, for us, it's complicated and, for now at least, the pusher is a better fit. Of course, being the gearhead geek that I am, I'm always doing something to it which in that world is not really 'normal'. Many, if not most, owners do virtually nothing to their coaches except insert their credit card in the pump and hand it over to the shop who does any needed work. There are a few exceptions but, probably 10-15% of the owners are hands on and at least 50% totally hands off. New and newer coaches can be pricey but used ones like our '03 are not really any more than a nicely upgraded GMC.

We've been on the road about a month and are headed to the GMCMI rally in Ohio today so it will be about 6 weeks total. Our first event was a local club (Blue Ridge Discoveries) rally in Petotsky, Michigan. On the third night out, we arrived at our campground and the PowerGear leveling jacks would not work. Condensation on the AC lines under the dash had dripped into the controller and apparently killed the circuit board. A replacement 'kit' is available but it's $850+. To have a dealer fix this would probably be $2000. Earlier this year, I attended 'Camp Discovery', a series of somewhat technical seminars on troubleshooting and understanding basic coach systems. Part of that was the jack systems. From that I knew there were only 5 functions:

1- start pump.
2- lower right rear jack by opening solenoid while pump is running.
3- lower left rear jack by opening solenoid while pump is running.
4- lower front jacks by opening solenoid while pump is running.
5- raise jacks by opening a dump solenoid and all the individual jack solenoids.

This is a 'ground control' system. That is +12V DC is present on all solenoids and the motor solenoid. The controller just makes the ground connections as needed. Without getting into a bunch of detail, when we got to the rally campground, I spent a couple hours with some jumper wires and determined I could manually control all 5 functions from the pump unit. I then drew up a wiring diagram and went to Lowes and purchased 5 momentary contact switches, a plastic box, some wire and few other odds and ends I didn't have with me. In about a couple more hours, I had a fully functional system that did EVERYTHING the PowerGear unit did. Plus it has the ability to raise a single jack where the PowerGear system does all jacks up which is a pain if you go too far down with one jack and want to lower just one corner of the coach. Works great and for the duration of our trip. When I get home, I'll modify the concept to utilize the membrane switch control pad in the cockpit and use relays to handle the amperage since the membrane switch won't carry the 2-3 amps required.

My Discovery friends were impressed although few really understood how straightforward it was.

I don't tell this story to brag on how smart I am, there are many, many GMC folks who could have done the exact same thing.

Our second rally was our first GMCMI equivalent rally for our Fleetwood Discovery (Discovery Owners Association, inc). It was held in Bath NY and about 9 coaches from the Blue Ridge Discoveries caravanned from Petotsky. DOAI has about 1200 member coaches, about the same as GMCMI. About 58 attended the rally. It was a totally different experience from GMCMI. LOTS of free time. Only a few seminars and none technical. The one 'pilots roundtable' could have been but the moderator decided to solicit 'the dumbiest thing you've ever done in your Discovery' stories. Good seminars on checklists and full timing and an open house with only 3 discoveries and 1 GMC (Jim and Robin Hadcock drove their GMC instead of their Discovery because they are also coming to the GMCMI rally). For all those differences it was a very good time. Oh, and several months ago, I suggested we do something like the 'black list'. This was well received and has been on line for about a month now. I presented it at the rally and we got 21 new members. We're up to 75 now. Most the Discovery folks don't do the forum or social media so getting the word out is a bit more difficult. Average age is probably on the high side of 60.

Different crowd. Different motivations. Different demographics. Different problems. ...and some of the same problems.

All that said, the leadership of DOAI is concerned about declining attendance as is GMCMI. To help understand what is going on, they did an exercise I'd done when I was still working. Folks brainstormed what they'd like to see and the items were captured on flip chart pages. After 20-30 items were captured and then EVERYONE was given sticky notes and numbered them 1-10. They then swarmed to the flip charts and put their sticky on their top 10 items with 10 being their #1 item. Once everyone finished, the value of their stickys were added up and the items ranked. Guess what the #1 item was?

#1 Technical seminars
#2 FOCUSED roundtables (discussions about SPECIFIC topics)

Other high vote getters included:

- Group activities
- Cooking
- Convection Microwave cooking
- Crafts
- Professionally led tours
- Quality vs quanity entertainment
- ICE CREAM SOCIALS!!!!!

Golf, which always gets a lot of attention, was not in the top 10.

That's about all I can remember off the top of my head. I was asked to be part of the group that did the exercise and is looking at increasing attendance so I'll have the details eventually.

I'm confident that they can learn a lot from what GMCMI does and will be sharing some of our best practices.