Friday, September 12, 2008

so, what to buy then?

Please do comment on the decoders I've featured and indeed let me know if you have others in mind that I've missed...

My strategy will be as follows (as one only has so much cash to play with of course):

Coreless motors (e.g. Linda) - ZTC diamond
High use engines requiring extras such as dither and lighting effects etc - ZTC diamond or TCS T1
Low use engines that just need a cheap decoder - Hornby R8249
Engines requiring a very small decoder - digitrax DZ125

and what about engines with two motors (Garratts of which I have 3) : here there is an option:

1 - power both motors with one bad boy decoder like the zimo mx68L at 4A.  £20 is likely to be a slightly cheaper option maybe and it will require less messing about.  There may however be slight differences between the engine units causing one to run faster than the other and this couldn't be fixed in the decoder.

2 - add a decoder for each engine unit, match the speeds by altering the CVs and then give them the same address so they work together.  Slightly more expensive and a lot of messing about. Also it may be necessary to turn the back EMF off on one of the units, otherwise they may start to 'flight' each other!

ummmm, choices.

Colin

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The Zimo MX68L is a function only decoder, no motor control. I think you need one of the MX64 decoders (up to 1.8 amps), or (for the Beyer Garrat), you may have to move up to one of the bigger decoders like the MX69 (for 3 or 5 amps).

Regards
John Russell
Probstdorf, Austria