Back in April we had a poor showing at a setup because of radio interference from another club. The few powered IR recievers that we had for our Digitrax system did yoeman service and once we realized what was going on we were able to do a better job of showing off to the assembled masses.
So now I am just starting to get suggestions for daisy chaining the power for our UP5 IR recievers. I figured either 20 or 18 gauge wiring, things will be wired in parrallel with spacing between feeds being 6' (this matchs our club standards). Digitrax says that five UP5's can be powered off of one wall wart, powering one Radio Reciever and 4 IR's shouldn't be that big of a deal. The problem is that I haven't found any durable small plug/sockets that I could mount to the UP5's and the daisychain.
does your system have a radio receiver or is it only ir. if it is radio you can change the loconet id # to avoid interference with another club or system. my club has an empire builder for our n scale layout and a superchief for our ho layout. we use loconet id # o for our ho layout and #5 for the n with no interference between them even with decoders using the same address.
20awg wire will work as i think you only need one wire along with the 6 wire loconet cables. automotive bullet connectors should work with one male and one female on each of the units
Setting: One old town hall Gym. Standard size BB court with a stage at the far end. Heavy Iron and wood construction, recently remodelled for updated electrics and internet (yes they have internet in the gym...we asked, the response, "it was cheap." Fair enough
Equipment: Club uses 3 Empire Builder systems to run layout. (one for each main and one for all other track.) We have two recievers at each end of the layout, with UP 5's at the center front or center back of each module. Loconet was up and active (we could plug in and had no problems controling trains). Radio was up and running no problems.
Situation: We set up the night before and had our LocoNet and Radio up and running with no problems. The morning of, we had exactly 2 hours of operations with few problems and none related to the Digitrax system. 2 hours earlier the other invited club had arrived and set up. They had recently shifted from DC to NCE on thier layout. The minute that they turned on the NCE we lost all radio contact excepting a 3 foot globe around the recievers. When they left and turned off thier system on the second day to watch the parade we had radio back...
We changed the settings on all the controls and it was consistant through out the show. When the NCE system was operating we had 3ft globe to work from for Radio, when they turned it off we were golden. We contracted Digitrax and NCE about this. The Digitrax reps said yes it was a problem and they were trying to come with a fix. NCE reps said yes it was a problem and that they were working on fixing it (the REALLY amusing part is that NCE users were saying that it wasn't a problem at all and that thier system played well with others, and that it was really all a problem of Digitrax. All of this AFTER reading the reply from the NCE reps.)
Grouse on: NCE stands for: No Consideration Ever Grouse off
Not to be a mean , but, have you contacted the Federales about your radio interference problem? FCC regs require that systems NOT interfere with each other.
A pleasant note to your friendly Federal authorities, with courtesy copy to NCE, might light a fire (or a fuse) in somebody's research department.
Otherwise, rig a conductive 'mosquito net' over your area to keep the unwanted signals out.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)