airwire with small engines

[budd]

I am fairly new to garden rr and planning on going rc battery power-- since i have a small radius area availably, was thinking  about either a aristocraft rogers (2-4-0) or a aristocraft switcher(0-4-0) and having the airwire receiver installed in it, is this a very wise choice for the amount of money , and what kind of performance might i expect to get. I havent bought anything yet.

Budd

[SERABILL]

 I use AirWire and install them for others. I think the performance is great. Compared to several other choices, the receiver is relatively small but provides good power handling and simplifies the addition of other functions since it has a DCC output. ALso, for small installation spaces, the receiver can be cut in half.

[cacole]

 Finding room for the AirWire900 Receiver is not as much a problem as finding room for the batteries.  If you want to run for any period of time at all you will need a fairly substantial battery pack, for which there is not much room at all in the locos you want to run.

I run all of my locos with the AirWire900 and have to use a trailing battery car in all but a Hartland Doozie Rail Bus.  I'm currently running a Hartland Big John Dunkirk locomotive, a Bachmann Spectrum 2-8-0 narrow guage Consolidation, a Bachmann Specturm 2-6-0 narrow guage Mogul, a Bachmann Spectrum narrow guage two-truck Shay, and a scratch built narrow guage Dunkirk.  The AirWire receiver and sound decoder and speaker fit into the boilers or tenders on all of these, but there was no room for on-board batteries.

[SERABILL]

I put 4.5 AH batteries with the AirWire, speaker & P-5 in the tender. That gives several hours of run time on many locomotives. Battery cars are a last resort in my opinion.