Observe good neighborly practices by arriving and setting up with the least amount of disturbance to your neighbors, some of whom may go to bed early and rise with the sun.
Drive with just your parking lights to avoid blinding others, survey your campsite and talk with your mate quietly about backing in strategy, use hand signals rather than yelling directions, and shut down your engine as soon as you are settled. Your neighbors will appreciate it.
I'd have to add "when possible/safe" to every sentence above. I think driving without sufficient light may cause more disturbance after you run over the neighbor's bikes and swing your tow vehicle through their tent... Hand signals don't work if you can't see your mate.
ReplyDeleteUnless someone is a total jerk, they don't intend to be a disturbance -- they just have trouble parking their rig at night.
A better suggestion there is to carry a bunch of small-ish LED lanterns (flashlight brightness but 360^) and mark out where you intend to park -- then just put it between the lights. It's easier to see dimmer light produced externally than seeing past the glare of your own lights reflected back.
If your back-in skills require very much direction in the first place, perhaps you need a different solution: Best answer then, day or night, is to put $50-100 into a cheap camera system so you can "drive your trailer" with decent vision of where it's going. I put one on my rig not so much for parking, but just to know when I have a dinky hybrid drafting "inside" my trailer on the highway, and to keep an eye out through my windowless back wall when I'm in the trailer (camera, 7" display in the cab, and wiring into main TV came to $65 total -- worth it!).
Another "techie" method I've seen -- there are magnetic/screw/stick-on lasers sold for power tools for only a couple bucks each -- one fellow put these shooting *downward along each wall* of his trailer, providing easy references to exactly where "straight back" from the trailer was -- it seemed to work quite well for him.