I have always been quite jealous of those original outside lights that came with my era of Airstream. They just plugged in to the outside outlet and were held in place by screwing to the special socket base. Well, my original socket was a mess when I got the trailer back in 2001 and I replaced it with a newer style that is water tight with a spring loaded flip out cover.
Several months ago, I bought at the big orange home center a porch light that was all of $7 or so with the idea of converting it to plug into this outlet. Since it was a bit rainy outside yesterday, this sounded like the perfect project for the afternoon. It took me about an hour and a bit of tinkering to fabricate the plugin part that was a cord end as well as the extension arm so the light would extend out past the flipped open cover on the socket.
Once I was done, I tried it out and it just seemed too bright. I tried a smaller wattage bulb but still too bright. I needed some type of light diffuser and I had just the stuff stashed away from when I did the interior. I found this thin gold colored punched aluminum at one of the Ace Hardware stores but at only one of the stores, so not all of them carry it. The pattern is called Union Jack and this is the same pattern that was in my trailer originally although it had a minimum of five coats of paint on it then and all of the triangle shaped holes were filled in.
I digress, as usual. Back to the light. The Union Jack fit perfectly and it gives the light a bit of nostalgia and matches the interior doors and drawers. I'll put this to use next month at the 4CU's Deadhorse Ranch rally. Aaargh!!
On a different note, I'll be taking the trailer downtown next Saturday for an event called "Motoring Through Time" that the city park's department puts on. There will be a number of vintage cars, trucks and campers on display. I went last year but didn't take the trailer. Got in on it this year and my neighbor and I will be taking our vehicles. I'll post pictures of the campers.
