[fsfazekas]

Hey guys,

Been a long time since I've been active on the forums but when I was last on, I was having a problem with my Airwire and P5 in an onboard (battery) install in my USAT Alco PB-1. Simply put once the engine is in motion, I can not trigger effects (bell, horn, whistle) from the Airwire Tx beyond the range of maybe 4 feet. It was implied that each company was pointing fingers at each other and nothing was being done to resolve the issue. Has anything changed?

I only ask as I see a number of current threads stating the use of Airwire + P5....is it fixed or are we all just living with the issue? I'm not hearing any griping so not sure what to think.

 

[K27_463]

There is no Issue to live with, as you put it. Your universe of samples is small (one). Other have a sample universe of hundreds or even many hundreds, including USA diesels and the PA/PB in particular.I personally know of one such exact install in the PA and PB that was fully controllable on a large layout in Arizona from so far away that you could barely see the loco. Most conversions are fully controllable from 100 feet or so. A problem such as you describe points to a component anomaly. Could be electronics but not likely. I would consider a bad (noisy) motor first,particularly since you state the problem results once in motion. This is exactly what a noisy motor will do. Then look at details of the installation and wire routing and method to see where improvements could be made, and lastly if all else fails to improve the situation, install filter and suppression. There are literally dozens of things that can be done to improve the range of performance, but most times those things are simply not necessary.

Jonathan/EMw

 

[fsfazekas]

Here is a link to the original thread for anyone that might have suggestions or know if anything has changed with airwire/P5 :
http://archive.mylargescale.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=48183



Given that this was seen as a "known issue" I had hoped in the intervening months maybe something had been resolved. Anyone that can reliably trigger the horn on a P5 via Airwire at say greater than 10' in a USAT engine, I'd love to see photos of the install...especially from anyone that has overcome such an issue. Airwire works flawlessly, it's only the communication to the P5 board that suffers...any thoughts?

 

[Gary Armitstead]

Paul Burch recently did it to a USAT SD70 MAC and he says its working perfectly. AirWire and P5.

 

[fsfazekas]

Yes Gary that's the very thread that prompted me to post this as Paul was also one of the folks in the original thread saying he was experiencing issues. If he's not anymore I was hoping to find out what's changed...