There may be hope...

It is said that none of us is as smart as all of us, so I went online to the Airstream Knowledge Forum to see what "all of us" might have to say about my generator failings (see previous post).

Amazingly, there are posts by several people who say that their Yamaha EF2400IS unit does in fact start up their 13,500 BTU air conditioner on their Airstream.

That really confuses the issue for me, so I left a post begging for some help or insight into why it works for them but not me.   It's really nice when the internet can connect you with people who will take the time to help.  I got a couple of replies and offers to help and now I have something to try before I just give up completely and return the generator.

First thing to try is to see if the air conditioner will start up by using normal household AC electricity.   There's no such juice in the storage unit, so I'll have to hook up and drive it 100 yards to check it out, but that's easy enough to do.  If it starts the unit, then the next step is to measure the power draw on start-up to see if it's more than the generator puts out (2400 watts maximum).  Then I can measure how much juice the generator is putting out.  When I know all this, I should know where the problem lies.

If the air conditioner is drawing too much, then there may be a solution by installing a "hard start" device.  This is way outside my talent zone for now, but I'm learning as I go...