Athearn Challenger

[mecovey]

I bought 2 of the Challengers and I am really impressed with the appearnce, pulling ability and sound, however I'm having considerable difficulty with the DCC portion. I sent the following e-mail yesterday to Athearn and hope to get it resolved:

[blue]Dear sir,
I have recently purchased 2 Athearn Challengers and I am having difficulty programming them to operate on my DCC system. I have a Digitrax Chief with a DSC100 command station (which has a booster from Tony's Train Exchange to boost the programming signal from the command station) and I use a DT 400 as my throttle.

I placed the engine on my isolated programming track, pressed PROG on the DT400, toggled PROG to Pg mode, pressed the Right Throttle to toggle to 4 digit addressing, entered "600" via the keypad and pressed enter.

According to the Digitrax manual, I was to get AD4=Owr followed by a blinking square during programming. I was then to get the message Ad4on?=Y and after pressing Y on the key pad CV 29 would be set to 4 digit addressing and after pressing exit the new address would be available.
What actually happened is, the blinking square flashes briefly (less that a second) and the message Ad4on?=Y does not appear. Instead I get a message that says No Pg and then displays the address I had tried to enter. after attempting to program this decoder several times without success, I tried to select it with the factory default setting of 03. Neither 03 nor any other address gets a response from the engine.

- Power is on as the lights in the number board come on but there is no other sound or motion.
- I used the above identical procedure to program 2 Broadway Limited Import engines without problems.

Is there a way to restore the factory default settings such as employed by Broadway Limited? I really like the engine but it's useless to me in its current state. Any assistance you can provide would be greatly appreciated.


Sincerely,

Michael Covey
[e-mail]

I fired up the other challenger last night and put it on the progamming track to see if I could read the CVs. Whether in Pg, Pd or Ph mode I received the FAIL message after the system attempted to read the settings. Considering the consequences of trying to change the address on the first engine, I didn't try to change anything on this one. I coupled up to a Tony's Clean Machine and began to clean track. I ran steadily for about an hour with all systems functioning correctly and then suddenly lost control of the engine. Although the DT 400 still showed it was active, I was not able to affect any change in speed, direction or sound.

Now I don't know what to do....any ideas?

Michael

[cacole]

MRC strikes again. When MRC first tried to get into the DCC arena, they had a special offer of six decoders for the price of two. Five out of six were bad. A diesel engine sold by MRC with a decoder already installed, had a bad decoder. A friend of mine has burned up several MRC decoders trying to program them on a Digitrax system, and has also fried several MRC sound decoders, and he keeps on buying MRC products. MRC's sounds are horribly crude when compared to other systems. For some reason, MRC just can't get their act together and put out a good decoder. I hope your experience doesn't turn out to be a case of a destroyed engine just because you tried to change the address, but that's what it sounds like might have happened. I've seen a couple of MRC decoders go off into never-never land when someone tried to change to a long address, and it took a lot of experimentation to recover.

[donja154]

fwiw - I programmed an Athearn Challenger using an NCE Power Pro. I programmed a long address and the engine runs fine. Maybe someone else will be able to tell you how to reset it, but I don't know how. I think I would send it back to Athearn and let them fix it. My only complaint is that the brake sound is practically non-existent ...less than 1/2 second. I'll probably send it back for them to fix. As the great philosopher Dirty Harry once said ... "A man's got to know his limitations".

[Anonymous]

just a thought. try 1600 instead of just 600. Thats what we do at my club layout and apearantly it avoids some difficulty. The athearn challenger is a beautiful engine, I hope its not messed up too bad.

[mecovey]

Thanks guys...I'll try the 1600 bit and see if that helps. I put the 2nd Challenger back on the rails this morning (the one I couldn't access after running it for an hour) and it worked fine. Go figure. I'll be curious to see what (if any) reply I get from Athearn.

[mecovey]

JPM335, I tried the 1600 address and still no luck. I taked to a friend last night who bought his Challenger the same time I did and his took the programming change with no difficulty. I hope to hear something from Athearn soon.

[rrinker]

Have you tried Direct mode instead of Paged mode? Not all decoders handle all modes of programming, although generally Paged is the more compatible choice. But you never know... It won't hurt anything to try.

--Randy

[mecovey]

Hi Randy -Thanks for the response. I tried Pg, Pd, Ph all with the same result. I wasn't able to read the CV settings in any of the three modes either.

[GGOOLER]

mine has problems reading the cv settings, but it does write okay.
i have not tried to program a 4 digit address yet.
some of the sounds are not mapped properly.
the first 4 functions are correct but the rest i dunno and missing the conductor all together. also the left rear linkage on the loco above the enncentric crank doesn't move.
so i guess i'll have to send mine back.
glenn

[mecovey]

I had the same problem with the CVs - I don't get the "all aboard" (ho hum) however the mute, headlight, whistle , bell, coupler clash and brake squeal are OK...At least on the one that runs - the other one is dead and awaits a response from Athearn. The folks at FirstHobby.com where I bought the engines (really good guys by the way) said that Athearn had indicated to them no one had complained about decoder problems. I think it would be a good idea to let them know. After all, they can't fix if if they don't know it's broke.

[mecovey]

I indicated in my post on 11/27/04 that I had contacted Athearn about the problems with this engine(s). Having bought and been satisfied with Athearn products for years I assumed they would want to know if there was a problem with their product and would assist in the resolution of any defect. I received an e-mail today from Athearn and both their "memo" and my response appear below:

-----Original Message-----
From: Athearn Help [mailto:[e-mail]]
Sent: Monday, November 29, 2004 4:59 PM
To: Michael Covey
Subject: RE: Athearn Challenger


Michael,
We recommend that you consult with Digitrax and the manufacturer of the decoder, MRC (rrtech@modelrectifier) about these questions since we cannot assist you.

Sincerely,

Athearn Trains

And my response:

Gentlemen,
Frankly, I was hoping for a little better response than a "pass the buck" one sentence memo. The boxes that the engines came in say Athearn NOT Digitrax or MRC. I would suggest you read the posts that are beginning to pile up on the various forums at Trains.Com regarding this engine and the attendant problems. Digitrax is not the problem as my e-mail clearly explained that following the instructions in the Digitrax manual, the Broadway Limited Engines and the Spectrum engine programmed fine. At any rate, I will be downloading the warranty card from your web site (which was not included in the box) and returning at least one of the engines.
I will expect a much better response than you have provided so far.

Sincerely,
Michael Covey

Looks like a case of caveat emptor - I don't know which I'm most disappointed in... a company I had come to respect and appreciate blowing off the problem or a really neat engine that turned out to be a dud. Hopefully, it's just a misunderstanding and thankfully I paid by credit card but I expected a lot more from both the engine and the company.

[GGOOLER]

mike
they told me the same thing if something was wrong with the decoder tell mrc.
so i did and this is what they said.

"glenn
the decoder can not be re-mapped in any way
if the order of the sound functions were not as i stated yesterday, the loco
has to go back to athearn there is something wrong with it
contact athearn on returning the loco"

i might try calling instead
glenn

[mecovey]

Hi Glenn,

Thanks for the information. I'll give Athearn a chance to respond to my e-mail and if no action, I'll try calling. I hope I can get them fixed - I got coal that needs haulin'

Michael

[GGOOLER]

mike
i just sent this to athearn and we'll see what happens

to whom it may concern,
I just recently purchased a challenger 4-6-6-4 loco
I love the loco its very nicely done
Except i have some linkage problem the rear engine valve gear assy. left part 149 does not move. Looks like the eccentric crank rotates in the center of the rear engine wheel assy geared w/traction tire 133.
also my sounds are mapped wrong f1-f5 are ok
the rest are not what they should be
and the conductor sound is not avaiable on any function
im using a digitrax dt400 w/12 functions
seems like f10-f12 are the same sound.
i would like instructions on how to send back the loco for a replacement
thank you
glenn gooler

[GGOOLER]

mike
i just got an e-mail from athearn
here it is

Glenn,
Please send it to:
Athearn Trains
1550 Glenn Curtiss St.
Carson, CA 90746
Attention: Repairs

Please ship it in its' original box. Please place the original box in another box with plenty of packing material around it. Be sure to include a note on an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper describing the problem along with your name and shipping address. We recommend that you ship it via UPS or any other carrier that offers a shipment tracking service. If your locomotive is DCC equipped please note that we do not have the means to test DCC equipped equipment so you will need to remove your DCC chip and restore the engine to analog mode so we can test it.
Sincerely,
Athearn Trains

it sounds like they want to blow off the responsiblity of the decoder by not mentioning what to do with it. and they dont know that the engine automaticly knows if its on a dcc or dc track.

i will send a new e-mail back to find out what is up with them
glenn

[mecovey]

Hi Glenn,
Dave from Athearn called me on Thursday afternoon. He also suggested contacting MRC and Digitrax to see if they have any suggestions. Dave agreed to contact MRC and I agreed to contact Digitrax and then we would talk again.

Yesterday, I took both engines over to my buddy's house and although he has exactly the same Digitrax set up that I have (Chief, DSC100 command station and DT400 throttle) we put the engines on his programming track and they programmed immediately. One of the engines runs fine, the other has intermittent sound and headlight.

The only difference I could see between our DCC arrangements is his programming track is only about a foot long with very short leads whereas mine is about 3 feet long and the leads are probably another 3 feet.

FirstHobby has continued to paly an active role and I anticipate reslution over time.