10-25-2010, 04:40 PM
Yes, that is a 'feature' that needs to be disabled. You can always edit your post afterwards, and sinc eit takes you to your post after you submit you can see if someone posted just ahead of you.
Anyway, mainly I wrote about the impracticality of sound on DC, because you need to get power to the sound chip before the motor, unless you don;t mind your locos moving at slow speed with no spund and then having the sound kick on as you speed up. Can;t get around it unless you put a battery in each sound loco. And compound that witht he 'taper wound' concept of small speed changes at the lower throttle positions and greater incremenets at higher throttle positions, and it's a recipe for poor control. Sound for DC is just a gimmick to sell to a wider audience, IMO.
The Tech 6, well, that IS running DCC. When in DC mode it puts variable DC to the track to control a conventional loco. WHen in DCC mode it's a limited single address DCC system that puts NMRA DCC on the rails. For a bit more (assumign you already have a DC pack), you can get one of the starter DCC systems and a DPDT toggle switch and accomplish the same thing with far more flexibility. Eventually you'll never flip the switch to DC.
No one says you need to upgrade all your locos at once. And if you stay away from sound it can be very economical - as little as $12 per loco, and this is NOT for some cheap junk decoder that isn't worth the space it takes up, this is a good quality one from NCE.
I've been sold on the concept of command control since reading the Astrac chapters in Sutton's "The Complete Book of Model Railroading" when I was a kid (always wanted to build one of those cab forward Docksiders, too...). Eventually there were the CTC-16 and CTC-16E series in Model Railroader, and just when I was starting to gather the parts to build a CTC-16E system, the debate started on an NMRA standard. I remember the sometmes furious arguments on the Compuserve Model Railroad forum. At the time, Keith G's Railcommand actually did more than Lenz's system, luckily others stepped in and bumped it up from the original design to what got adopted as DCC. I was away fromt he hobby for a while after that, and missed some of the early DCC stuff, but when I came back I knew I wanted DCC.
Let me also add that while you CAN do everythign a DCC decoder does with a stationary 'DC' throttle, with DCC it's per locomotive and it stays witht he loco. Somethign the TAT IV tried to do with the DIP head and resistors for the settings for each loco, that bypassed the panel controls. Find the settings for a given loco, build a plug ion module with those settings. With DCC that's not necessary, all those settings are saved and are 'part' of the loco itself, no need to shuffle (and lose) plugs to get the proper fined tuned performance from each loco.
--Randy
Anyway, mainly I wrote about the impracticality of sound on DC, because you need to get power to the sound chip before the motor, unless you don;t mind your locos moving at slow speed with no spund and then having the sound kick on as you speed up. Can;t get around it unless you put a battery in each sound loco. And compound that witht he 'taper wound' concept of small speed changes at the lower throttle positions and greater incremenets at higher throttle positions, and it's a recipe for poor control. Sound for DC is just a gimmick to sell to a wider audience, IMO.
The Tech 6, well, that IS running DCC. When in DC mode it puts variable DC to the track to control a conventional loco. WHen in DCC mode it's a limited single address DCC system that puts NMRA DCC on the rails. For a bit more (assumign you already have a DC pack), you can get one of the starter DCC systems and a DPDT toggle switch and accomplish the same thing with far more flexibility. Eventually you'll never flip the switch to DC.
No one says you need to upgrade all your locos at once. And if you stay away from sound it can be very economical - as little as $12 per loco, and this is NOT for some cheap junk decoder that isn't worth the space it takes up, this is a good quality one from NCE.
I've been sold on the concept of command control since reading the Astrac chapters in Sutton's "The Complete Book of Model Railroading" when I was a kid (always wanted to build one of those cab forward Docksiders, too...). Eventually there were the CTC-16 and CTC-16E series in Model Railroader, and just when I was starting to gather the parts to build a CTC-16E system, the debate started on an NMRA standard. I remember the sometmes furious arguments on the Compuserve Model Railroad forum. At the time, Keith G's Railcommand actually did more than Lenz's system, luckily others stepped in and bumped it up from the original design to what got adopted as DCC. I was away fromt he hobby for a while after that, and missed some of the early DCC stuff, but when I came back I knew I wanted DCC.
Let me also add that while you CAN do everythign a DCC decoder does with a stationary 'DC' throttle, with DCC it's per locomotive and it stays witht he loco. Somethign the TAT IV tried to do with the DIP head and resistors for the settings for each loco, that bypassed the panel controls. Find the settings for a given loco, build a plug ion module with those settings. With DCC that's not necessary, all those settings are saved and are 'part' of the loco itself, no need to shuffle (and lose) plugs to get the proper fined tuned performance from each loco.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad of the 1950's in HO
Visit my web site to see layout progress and other information:
http://www.readingeastpenn.com
Visit my web site to see layout progress and other information:
http://www.readingeastpenn.com