Re: full timers now
First of all, welcome to the group! We lived in Cheyenne for 18 years and we loved it, but it can be cold and it will get windy. We stayed at the Terry Ranch the last time we were there and we do not recommend it. The store and restaurant are nice but the RV park is poorly maintained and has no trees larger than 5' tall. Most are smaller and no protection from the wind at all. The park is about 6 miles south of Cheyenne and sits on the top of a very windy hill, with nothing between it and the northwest wind but a barbwire fence.
There are several much nicer RV parks in Cheyenne. Jolly Roger's RV has a nice one for very reasonable prices and AB Camping is also much nicer than where you are staying. Your vintage Airstream is a quality RV but it was poorly insulated and the fiberglass that it once had is probably mostly compacted. This is not going to be easy if the weather gets really bad. The wind at Terry Ranch will make it much more difficult.
I highly suspect that what you have is a converter, rather than an inverter. A converter changes 120V-ac to 12V-dc power and supplies all of your lights and appliances as well as the water pump. An inverter changes 12V-dc into 120V-ac from the batteries. I don't believe any 72 RV came with an inverter. I suggest that you get a new converter from Progressive Dynamics [ PD9145A (45 Amp)] (
http://www.progressivedyn.com/power_converters.html ) or some similar product to supply your 12V power. That float charger will not be nearly enough to power everything and charge the battery as well.
The 30A power should be plenty to operate what you have, but most likely the converter is what is tripping the breaker. I suggest you try unplugging the converter and see if that doesn't correct that part of the problem. Since the breaker was in the trailer, it may also be that the breaker is what the problem is because they do fail. Also, plugging in to a 50A outlet will not supply you one bit more power because that 30A breaker is the limiting factor, as it should be for safety. If you had a short and were plugged into a 50a outlet, the result would be a fire if the 30A breaker were not to open and there was a short.
Just so you know, I am retired from electrical work.
Getting back to living in your trailer in Cheyenne from Nov. 17 for the next couple of months, you should expect to see at least some nights with low temperatures near -30 degrees and with winds that exceed 50mph. It might not happen, but the odds are that it will at least a few times. At that time of year it is not unusual for the daily high to be anywhere from +50 degrees to -15 degrees. Cheyenne is a place of great temperature variations. And the wind is almost constant. When we lived there we considered a day with wind of of 10mph or less to be a still day. Truly still days are very rare. Remember that Cheyenne is at 6000' of altitude and is on a high, treeless ridge. There are no mountains to it's immediate west to break the winds.
Where in your new RV are the tanks located? In the kind of temperatures that you can expect, you will probably need to keep the fresh water tank full and use water from it when the cold gets very low. One of the reasons is the fact that most RV parks in Cheyenne use the "drain back" water hydrants and require that type of use in very cold weather to keep them from freezing. City water lines are buried to 5' below ground to prevent freezing. Next, consider where your black waste tanks is located as well. It is important to keep the dump valve for it closed and only empty when it is near full, and if it is not protected and heated, it will freeze.
Give some thought to where your water lines for the fresh water system are located and how you will heat them. If they are in cabinets that are closed and also near the floor, they will very likely freeze on really cold nights. That is one of the reasons that there is very little use of RVs in Wyoming in the winter.
As to heat, make sure that you arrange to get a large rental propane tank for a service to supply your furnace as the tanks that come with the RV will not last more than a day or two in very cold weather. Friends or ours found that they used an average of 120# of propane per week in the winter in a place where they were sheltered from any wind.
Quite frankly, I love Cheyenne, Wyoming, but I would never consider making any attempt to spend a winter there in a 1972 Airstream or anything similar.
