OK. I have an NCE Power Cab and it is really cool. (Oh by the way I'm REALLY new at this). I built a consist just playing around, with the three Milwaukee Road Hiawatha FP7A/B/C and I hooked in my Athearn Challenger 4-6-6-4 with sound. The challenger is my lead. Once i put it into a consist, I can't control the sounds unless I select Loco 3943, then I can do sounds. Is there a way to do it still controlling the consist? Thanks for your help guys/gals. (politically correct, did you see that!?) Dan
Did you select the Challenger as the lead loco in the consist (i.e. have it on the throttle first, then add the others)? If that doesn’t work, you will need to program the CVs on it so that the functions respond to the consist address. Make sure the proper bits in CVs 21 and 22 are set for the functions you want the 4-6-6-4 to respond to.
Rbrodzinsky thanks for your response. I do have the challenger listed first. Interesting that if I go to select loco and select my FP7A and FP7C and turn on the headlights. Then I do select loco and select the consist number 127. Then I select loco for the challenger and run the system with that selected, I can do all my challenger sounds and when selecting direction the headlights do what they are supposed to do and I can run all my sounds and all the engines work. I’m so confused and it’s probably not the way I should do it but it works for now. Hehe. Next is to figure out speed matching. I have momentum set to 6 for the challenger and it is slower than the FP7, FP7B, and the FP7C. Dan Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
What kind of decoder does it have? I know with LokSound decoders you can select which CVs respond to the consist CV and which only respond to the engine when it's selected.
I bought the challenger with the tsunami card from Loksound already installed. How do I access the tsunami CVs? Thanks for your help. As I said, I’m new to the hobby and maybe over my head. I’m learning about DCC, IMRI, building an agressive layout, the Atlas N-16 Atlantic Longhaul, I received my PowerCab two days ago, I’ve put the cart before the horse numerous times, I.e the challenger and the Milwaukee Road Hiawatha train will not function on the N-16 9 3/4 radius turns! Ugh! So please bare with me. So o guess to start, how do I find the consist CVs for the challenger and tsunami?
First, the Tsunami is from Soundtraxx, not ESU. As mentioned above, the function consist CVs are 21 and 22. Take a look at the Soundtraxx website. They have a CV manual which tells you the settings for the functions you want enabled in consist. You may want to consider using JMRI Decoder Pro for programming decoders. It provides a standard user interface which eliminates the need to do binary arithmetic.
Ok. Overload! Makes sense. I’ve been playing with JMRI for about a day and a half. I have my N-16 layout and switches in JMRI with the switches working (on the computer). I don’t have the NCE USB board yet it comes tomorrow. So I can’t use the JMRI decoder Pro yet. So I will read the Soundtrax manual and see what I can skrew up. Hehe. Good thing there is a factory reset. Hehe. Thanks for everyone’s help! Dan
I just looked in the CV list in my Challenger book and CV 21 defaults to 0. If CV 21 is set to 1, it will follow the consist address. Not well written to understand what that means I’m guessing that if I set CV21 to 1 in the challenger then I will be able to play all the sounds when the challenger is in a consist. Am I guessing correctly? Dan
one thing not mentioned yet, is are you using advanced consisting or basic consisting? If using advanced consisting, the lead loco (the one going forwards) should follow your function commands. (using the consist address) If you are using basic consisting, then you need to select the loco address you want to control. Greg
Advanced. So I went into 3943 challenger and set CV21 to 1 which uses the consist settings. I got rid of my consist, built a new one still used 127 as the consist number. 3943 challenger is the front engine, 950 Hiawatha EMD FP7A as the rare engine. Added Hiawatha 951 EMD FP7B and Hiawatha 952 EMD FP7A. All work perfect and 3943 challenger does work with all sounds now. Interesting that the Con listed is 3943 I’m guessing because it’s CV21 is set to use consist settings. All works great now. Thanks to Rbrodzinsky for mentioning CV21 settings! Now we’ll see what my next learning experience will be. Hehe. I guess I’m doing ok for two days. Thanks to all for the help Dan
The nce will show any loco address in the consist as the consist.... you can run the consist from any address of any member in the consist, but you you will need to use the consist address to control the functions the way you want them.... It would be nice to have an automated way to set CV21 to some defaults when building the consist, at least turn horn/bell on for front and rear locos and off for "middle" locos. but this really works better than the "basic" or "universal" consisting, especially when you run a goodly number of locos.
