Just got my new NCE wireless and am really enjoying it and I’m sure will have many questions. Playing with speed settings I’m wondering what most others do. 28 speed steps seem fine to me and I’m thinking that I’ll set CV’s 1, 5 and 6 so that my engines will run at about 2 mph for each step with a max of 56 scale miles per hour.
I’m choosing this for a couple of reasons. Running slower makes the layout seem bigger. I’ll have a pretty good idea of what the actual scale speed is and the grandson will not be able to race trains around the layout[swg]
Along with Rich and Chuck, I also like and prefer 128 speed step, as it’s more subtle than 28. My goal for speed step 001 is 1sMPH…or less. Actually, I would rather have a locomotive that had terrific slow speed response with a motor-only decoder than a great sound decoder that only ran okay.
FYI: Maybe a typo but you want to change CV 2 rather than CV 1. CV 2 is your VStart or start voltage adjustment.
Like you I use the 28 steps . to me at least 128 just seems like way to many times to push the speed increase button or turn the knob , but thats just my opinion. I can see where others like the 128.
I also use 28 speed steps. I limit the top speed of my locos as well, and speed match them all. I use JMRI and Decoder Pro to do that with the user defined speed table in the decoders.
I run everything with 128. I try to tune everythign to creep on step 1, lowest minimum speed it can susteain. Usually easy since I use TCS decoders with automatic BEMF. I tune speeds using CV 2, 5 and 6, except for ^$* Tsunami who makes you use speed tables. Settings depend on the type of loco - a road loco will have a higher CV 6 relative to a switcher, so the switcher will have a wider band of ‘slow’ operation whereas the road unit will giddy up and go quicker as I advance the throttle. I don;t run passenger trains but they would have the quickest acceleration. If you draw a line through the values for CV2, 6 and 5, a switcher woudl be a concave curve, a road freight is sort of straight, and a passenger unit would be convex.
One of these days I’ll get ambitious and attempt to standardize all of my locos, but right now they are all over the palce except for ones that I matched to run together. Or be really tricky and adjust the curves so that one model ‘loads up’ faster than a different make, just like the real thing. In the meantime, there’s the manual fallback of changing how fast you crank the knob.
I also have the NCE PHP Wireless. It’s a great system.
I use 28 speed steps. And I adjust all the locomotives with acceleration and deceleration to my liking. I also like to run them slow.
Since your system supports it, I would suggest you get the free JMRI Decoder Pro, and get a USB to Serial cable. And then you can easily program your decoders with a point and click interface. It’s way easier that trying to figure out CV numbers and use the throttle.