PradOz posted:

everyone has an opinion hey!

i love my bed flys, so does many other people i know. saves all that water from the rain, dew etc getting on the bed end canvas roof. you will know how good they are when you get to pack up in the wet. ( I guess there will be an answer to that too)

why not spend about $20 on sail track, screw and silicone it on (have a look at a parked van up close if need be) and buy some secondhand flys and give them a go. better than all the mould and wrecking the bed roof. bedflys are available on ebay from time to time, standard ones on there now in melbourne from someone who probably upgraded to fly with mesh sides (which give some extra privacy)

One other benefit - the gap over the bed canvas keeps the van and beds cooler than without. similar concept really to why people fit a tarp over the top of their van and tents when camping. And the flys only take a few moments to pack up. standard ones simply slide off and fold up. bagged ones roll up and zip into the bag and stay on the van. good luck with your choice - your time and experience will tell....

Best Off Road posted:

Tang,

On cold nights the condensation will form with or witout. Condensation is primarily water leaving your body from your breath and then turing to water when it hits a cold surface. Flys won't stop this.

They do keep the dew off the ends but unless you are leaving early each day, just let the sun come up and dry it off.

I agree with PradOz that packing up wet is no fun. Depends on how often it happens as to the benefit. You fold your ends in "envelope" style to keep the beds dry and then simply pull the ends out again (2 minutes) when you get home to dry the canvas.

All I am saying is the time involved in putting these things up is not warranted when balanced against the benefits IMHO. Others clearly love them and you will see a lot of Jaycos with flys.

I like a quick set up and pull down time, I'm not a patient man. If you've got plenty of time, the flys may work for you.

Jim.

Anthony (Vic) posted:

Jim,

You have a point, in that the bed flys are not that necessary as we first thought they would be. We bought our camper in 2004 with bed flys. We started off using them everytime we set up, for all the above reasons.

Now days, like on our on our 2 month trip around Oz, we didn't set them up at all, unless we thought that there might be a bit of rain overnight or following morning and we were going to be breaking camp that morning. The purpose being to keep the bed dry while packing up.

cheers Anthony