New to camping

Welcome, you've come to the right  place for information (Not necessarily from me, I'm more of a lurker).

1. R-pods have rather standard travel trailer fixtures. One of our forum members has pointed out that a travel trailer is a house on wheels, shaking and rattling down the roads. Things will go wrong more often than with a land-anchored house and these constantly need work. All that can be said is - Get used to working on it, and call for help from this forum when needed. We also have a 171 and it's had some routine stuff go wrong, nothing bad or unusual except for our magical fridge that intermittently won't work on propane when travelling miles to go to NC but invariably works well when our dealer fires it up back home. A sense of humor helps.

2. Ahh, the R-Dome. Beautiful concept, unusually poor execution, in my opinion. The material is very flimsy, we're starting our 3rd year and I doubt if ours will last 2 more years at the rate it's deteriorating. The material used is just not 'tent-grade'. The 'PahaQue' side tent may be a more successful version, I don't know from experience, but I do know the material used is a lot better (and, no, I don't work for them).

Thanks very much for the feedback. 

The R-Dome material is not like that used in hi quality modern tents, too flimsy, and a few weeks ago I put a hole in the bottom of the 'loop' for the front long pole when it caught as I fed it thru, and - no, I'm not unusually strong or rough. So, I'm glad to hear that some others have had good experiences with the r-dome, but in my opinion I still think it's pretty lousy as tents go.