After touring the layouts at the NGRC, my wife and I will be doing a rebuild of our garden railroad. The problem is that I am not up on radio control. Where is the best place to start the learning process and who in your experience are good systems to look at? Thanks.
Durwood
For radio control one must first decide on track power, battery power, or live steam.
If track power, Analog(straight DC), DCC or some form of AC like MTH.
Battery and live steam are similar for controlling the loco, biggest difference is battery only needs more amps.
Then there is sound options as well as for non steam users do you want smoke and do you want it to puff.
Once you have decided on all of this, there are different manufacturers that make products and people can tell you what they have used and hopefully pros and cons of their system. All systems have pluses and minuses and for some it is the price vs performance, you usually get what you pay for.
I found Tony Walsham's site http://www.rcs-rc.com/pages/p-list-pro and Cliff Barker's http://www.cliffbarker.talktalk.net/speedcontroller.html the most useful when I started although Del Tapparo's system http://1stclass.mylargescale.com/DelTapparo/gscalegraphics_1_005.htm is also I believe a good one. My understanding is that Del did Tony's programming; anyway, all three have good reputations. I'm not a fan of Revolution (too one make focussed) or Airwire (now old technology and in my limited experience not easy to use) but they might be worth a look. As always, George Schreyer's site is one worth looking at; in this case for the technical tips at http://www.girr.org/girr/tips/tips.html
In my view, it's also worth subscribing to the forum at G Scale Central (it's free although it does have a UK focus) as the discussion on battery power there seems to be about the most dynamic on the net. http://www.forum.gscalecentral.net/default.aspx
In the end, though, you have to pick a sysetm and dive in; give it a go it's not that difficult if even an electronic numpty like me can make it work!
spoz ... Airwire (now old technology and in my limited experience not easy to use)...
... Airwire (now old technology and in my limited experience not easy to use)...
I'm not sure which AirWire system you have ever had experience with, but it is far from being old technology, and is very easy to use.
The simplest thing for the OP to do would be to download the operating manuals for the different systems and then decide from them which system he thinks might be best.
It depends on exactly you want to do with the remote system. I use the Sandstone & Termite Railway system
http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/satr/2point4GHz.htm
The reason for using this system for me was I am able to use servos to operate side doors on my ore cars. I drive the train to the over head ore dump & by simply operating the servo by remote, it opens the side doors and dumps the load. It is designed to have some "action" on the layout.
As you can imagine, when the grandkids come around they each have a ore train. One drives up the ramp & dumps the load, while another is waiting underneath to load, this action can go on for hours.
I have 6 locos, of which the ore trains are a single wagon.
Work out what you want to do with your train. Each commercial system is an excellent product. It is just that I want servo operation.
What I would like to see in future is all systems to have servo provision & sound as standard.
Regards from Andrew
Sandbar & Mudcrab Railway
I'm not going to get into a dispute over this, as each person has their own requirement set and personal preferences. However, for me I prefer something which operates in either the 422 MHz or 2.4GHz bands; I'm also not a fan of multi digit numerical addressing (I always hated that in small scales and was one of the reasons I never went DCC in N scale), and I found airwire's instructions more difficult to follow than some others. But I am more than willing to admit that many people like that way of doing business and they are successful because of that; tis why I said they might be worth a look - just not for me.
But the bottom line I guess I was trying to get across is, sure, listen to other people's preferences but do your own review of what's on the market. However, in the end you've just got to take the plunge and I doubt if you'll regret it whichever system you use, provided it's from a reputable source (and Airwire are certainly that). Most people seem to end up wondering what took them so long; it's so vastly superior to being stuck with track power. And, of course, it doesn't matter which system you choose, it'll be fully portable - if you visit a mate who uses a different system, or track power, or live steam, you can operate alongside any of them.
Agree downloading the operating manuals is a good idea; just don't let them put you off! Some can be a bit technical, particularly when it comes to binding (and its equivilants). It's not nearly as hard as a first read can make out.
Steve
This is a frequent topic of discussion on this and other forums, so I'd suggest searching around here and over at mylargescale.com for some recent discussions. Search terms might include Radio Control, R/C, Revolution, Airwire, DCC...
Fair warning; you're going to elicit some very strong opinions, as people tend to have their favorite "flavor" of R/C system and defend it almost to the death against the others. I've used most of them and they all do the job. Which system will be best for you has a lot to do with how you plan to run your trains.
If you've got access to back issues of GR, I wrote a 3-part "Garden Railways Basics" series on the various control systems a year or three ago. It highlights the various advanced contol systems that are on the market and some of their strengths and weaknesses.
If you've got a club in your area, I'd suggest finding out what your fellow members are using, and if at all possible, try your hand at using it yourself to see if you like the interface and the control. In many cases, you won't know if you don't like it until you try it, and none of these systems are exactly cheap. The good news is that if you buy a system and ulitmately don't like it, you can usually sell it to someone else and recoup at least part of your investment.
If you want to give us some notion of what you're looking to do, we can offer better advice here as well.
Later,
K
The question no-body has asked is : "what are you going to use it for"? when I first stated out I used a simple fwd/rev system and that did me fine for all my 16mm scale models -in fact it still does. As the models grew larger there was more to control: engine speed, fluid flow, brakes etc!
The question you have to ask yourself is : "I have 4 or 6 channels -what am I going to use them for and why?"
regards
ralph
The Home of Articulated Ugliness
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