Well, I spent the the morning at the MR Club adjusting the Digitrax AR1 reversers again. One of the fellows was seeing problems with his BLI E units running across the gaps. These engines really can draw a lot of power. If the reverser does not change fast enough, a short will result and the engine will shut down, and go through a power up restart. After experimenting with various combinations of E3/E6/E7/USRA Mikes. I now have the AR1’s set for about 3/4 CW on the adj pot. It still detects and reverses fine for a single ‘non-sound’ engine. I hate to think what may happen with 3 or 4 unit consists of sound engines. What have others done to address this issue. Are any of the other ‘reversers’ handle this better?
Jim Bernier
At a club I run at locally, we use AR-1 and PM42 modules exclusively. Most of the members have QSI equipped locomotives and many of them run consists of these with little or no problems in and out of the reverse loops (we have six on the layout). I know that the Super Chief is sensitive to powering back up from a short when QSI equipped locomotives are on the layout, but once your reversing units are setup correctly you shouldn’t have any problems in this regard.
I’m running out there tomorrow night, so I can setup a 4 diesel consist of QSI equipped locomotives and run them both ways through the AR-1 equipped loops to see what I can get to happen. I will report back if I find out anything strange.
I don’t do reversing sections or autoreversing units, so I won’t be a lot of help. The 1156 bulbs will eliminate any short if the AR unit fails to do it’s thing, but that’s about all. They won’t make the AR unit work any better.
I would think the Digitrax tech support ( techsupport@digitrax.com )might be able to give you insight into the best setting combination that would work, or the Digitrax Yahoo list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Digitrax/
[:D]
I have done some more testing. 2 BLI E units, a P2K GP9(QSI sound), and a BLI USRA 2-8-2(strange consist!). I adjusted the pot on the AR1 to about 3/4 CW and tested again - no problems. I got down to about 2/3 CW before I started seeing problems with some of the QSI units going offline and restarting. I was watching the PM42 power district and it flashed ‘red’ for that power district when this happened. The AR1 relay clicked over right after the ‘short’ was detected. I moved the pot sensitivity back up to about 3/4 CW and had no further issues. I then ran a singe P2K SD60(Digitrax DH163L0 decoder), and it tripped the AR1 just fine(still detected and reversed with a single non-sound engine). After I was satisfied with the adjustment, I did some more ‘stress’ testing of the AR1 with QSI sound engines. It appears that the BLI ‘E’ units are the worst ‘current rush’ engines. I wonder if reducing the size of the capacitor would help(or maybe the resistance of the capacitor charge circuit should be increased). I know the BLI SW7’s have a much smaller capacitor(and seem to be more sensitive to dirty track causing a shutdown/reset of the sound system itself). The new Digitrax sound systems have a very small ‘energy’ unit(read capacitor) attached via individual wires.
Jim