Tetter's 2010 EOY Challenge

[tetters]

Good Evening...

I'm done. Sort of. I had a couple of things I've been putting off for months but finally got out of the way. In each case I had some of the parts and pieces needed, but just not the wear-with-all or time to get'er done.

The first and certainly not the last thing to be done was the construction of my very own GERN STATIC GRASS BLASTER. I won't bore anyone with construction photos (besides...there are none...) as we've seen a couple of 'em put together here on BB already. However, here is a pic of the completed project.



Next is a sound decoder install and loco rebuild I've been putting off since last year. I completely disassembled this poor P2K SW900/1200 switcher and then placed all the parts in a zip lock baggie vowing I would not rebuild it until I was ready to put sound in it. Well that happened last night.



I had a very interesting time with this one. There were a few times where I thought to heck with this...I'll just throw this in another geep and get a Micro Tsunami for the SW9. But I didn't. So...

I purchased a Soundtraxx TSU AT1000 board and an MRC 3/4 speaker. Which in hind sight was probably too big a speaker, but I managed to the get it to fit. However not without some reservation and the idea to go back and "fix" a couple things...which is why I say, sort of, when I say I'm done. For now this will stay as is for a another week before I take a crack at making a smaller enclosure for the speaker. I think I found a rather unique place to put the speaker once I removed it from the factory enclosure. The weight over the front truck was removed and that left a considerable gap underneath the decoder, even after I got the LED w/resistor in place which is another "fix" I will go back to later on as the bulb looks rather dim as it doesn't line up well with the lens.



You can see the black factory installed enclosure at the back. I managed to get everything to fit minus the enclosure. However I had to sacrifice my cab crew and interior, in order to hide the capacitor inside the cab.





I was also visited by a new friend this morning as well. The tiny Spider here I think was getting a little impatient with me as it got to roaming around on those little legs "looking" at my progress for the better part of entire morning. I think my little friend wanted to go for a ride on my loco when she was all wired up and ready to roll...



I'll post up some pictures next weekend showing how I fixed the two issues I've noted. I hope to be able to build a tiny enclosure and get the front light better aligned to the lens.

Maybe then I'll move on to a bigger project which is layout based...hold on to yer hats for that one...