Flyscreens

On our last trip, we discovered the importance of flyscreens. On the first night, we had setup camp outside Wagga Wagga. It had rained a bit before we went to bed, so it was humid and hot. But there was so many bugs we couldn’t open the windows. Thinking perhaps it was a single occurrence, or second night was the same, but this time hundreds of mosquitos! We purchased the flyscreen material and tried all means of fixing them to the sliding rear windows. First night, we used electrical tape. Sorted! we thought… but the next day they blew off while driving. Protecting our remaining valuable screens, we took them off each day and fixed them again each evening. When we got to Fraser Island we started fixing what was left of them semi-permanently with 100 mph tape. Well, the tape held but the cloth screens seemed to tear out from the continual flapping in the wind.

You can see the evolution and declining quantities of screen we had left.

When we were fuelling up east of Uluru at Curtin Springs, a new 78 series v8 hire camper passed us… with like residential looking flyscreens fitted to it’s rear sliding windows. How crap it looked I thought to myself, but how crap was I! The idea was excellent… not elegant, but excellent. It gave them permanent flyscreens but the ability to slide the windows. It also dawned on me that if this was for a hire camper, they would do the most practical thing, regardless of how it looked.

With all that behind us, we needed to come up with a solution for our new camper. Considering we are going to sections of the world were there is over a tonne of mosquitos per square kilometre, investing in some flyscreens should pay off. (Seriously, think about that, how much can a mosquito weigh?!)

We had quoted magnetic flyscreens at a whopping ~$580 which realistically is a lot of fuel at $.90/L. The solution would be good, and neat, but you couldn’t drive with them on.
I had considered making my own, and whilst outside test fitting some strips of magnet an idea smashed through my head… why not just fit the flyscreen like you would to a door? put it over the gap and squeeze the beading strip in. Well, tried it last night and it seemed to work.

Tonight I picked up some aluminium fly screen which is quite tough and rigid and feels very nice. You can see from the pictures below how it looks. You can also notice where I accidently tore a bit of it in the corner. The corners are really tight (virtually too tight to fit the bead in) and caused me to use too much force.

Already a little bit disappointed with the top corner, the whole bottom straight section was as an utter disappointment as it was too tight to fit the bead in at all. Cassie however did some awesome folding trick and the screen seems to hold itself in there perfectly.

The only downside I can see so far is that if the glass gets dirty underneath, it’s going to be difficult to clean without leaving dirty patterns on the glass after washing.

I’m torn between installing them all before the camping trip and seeing how they perform on the ~400KM camping trip in a fortnights time or the ‘play it safe’ approach by just installing one and seeing what happens without risking the rest. They take about 30 minutes to install now we know how to do it, but it is a two person job. Maybe I’ll go for a quick test drive with this one and see if it budges at all before fitting the rest.

The ~$580 quote did include one for the back door which was very cool. It allowed you to walk through it and it snapped shut behind you. This will take some practice and development, but I am keen to see what we can come up with.
Another idea on the drawing board (hey, I’ll get it all out in one go) is a flyscreen tent. It’s all well and good having the car bug-proof, but you can’t spend all your time in it. These guys did roughly our trip a few years ago, and at least through Russia I think they lived in it.

That, or one of these. Not decided yet which idea I prefer, they both have strengths and weaknesses.

I would say the attached solution would be easier to setup each day, but it is attached (but boring sitting next to the car all the time) and doesn’t allow access into the car without letting bugs in (that would be awesome) but then again, if we had the above, we might set it a bit further forward so we could get in the front door …ideas… ideas… ideas.