The prior owner to our 99 Contessa had the power connection to the Girard awning unhooked and taped off, and had been using it only by manually hand-cranking the awning in and out. When I reconnected the awning power, everything tested out and appeared to be working normally, so I was wondering why the prior owner would have unhooked the system. I later found out why: I determined that some earlier service technician had incorrectly hooked up the wires from the wind sensor, and so when the wind was over 25mph, the awning would have automatically extended!!! I'm thinking the owner found this out the first time he was driving down the road and turned on his inverter (thus allowing the awning to have power), and his awning started to extend while he was driving down the road! Can you imagine?! No wonder he disabled the whole system; it probably terrified him!
Fortunately, I discovered this when the rig was plugged into shore power on a windy day, and came out and discovered the awning had opened up by itself! Upon inspecting the wiring color code from the sensor, and comparing it to the wiring diagram from Girard, I saw that the RV technician had swapped the red and black wires! Further inspection revealed stress/strain evidence in the fabric and mounting bracket indicating that this awning had probably opened while the prior owner had been driving!. I now have it hooked up correctly, but at my wife's suggestion I also installed a power on/off switch on the control panel so that we can drive confidently knowing that the awning can't auto-extend even if the control electronics get confused.