On my 200 U295 and many others around these years, the main awning is very long and I feel under-engineered for the length of it. When I bought my coach a year ago I noticed that there was a slight "droop" in the tube and was worse if it had rain water on it. I also noticed that looking thru' ads online an awful lot of other FT coaches had a similar problem too. My answer to this dilema was to cut and shape a piece of 1" thick Mahogany that would sit in the rain trough below the awning and support the tube while travelling This has worked very well for me and has not moved at all due to the fact I have to lift the weight of awning off this support in able to remove it so I can unroll awning and use. This then brought another little problem to light during a wet rainy night. Upon getting up I noticed the tube again distorted ( heavy material + water) so I got to thinking again. What I came up with is an adjustable Aluminum support that holds the tube in the middle and sits on the ground. I know Camping World have a unit that will do these things but those cannot be used in a situation like most of us have in that there is another awning below the main right where this would normally fit.I have included pictures for explanation. I sprayed the wooden support with clear varnish to keep it dry.
Hope this helps if you too have this problem
John
For many years we have used a center awning support. I is 'automatic' in that it fully supports a stowed awning, but needs no attention to unroll or retract.
See: Dometic Corp - Awning Cradle Support - Awning Accessories - Camping World (http://www.campingworld.com/shopping/item/awning-cradle-support/10924)
John,
You always keep one end of the deployed awning low to allow run-off during rain, right?
yes I do, but in a downpour that still causes a lot of weight to suddenly drop on the material. I am actually trying to design something similar to what C World sells to put under the awning to create a domed effect, that is both easy to install, does not take any real time and does not cost what they want for a few flimsy pieces of alloy strips.
i guess that you can do that with a manual awning, but I think that it would be difficult with an automatic electrical/pneumatic awing.