Ok Santa came through and delivered a Zephyer this year. I have two locos I am trying to speed match with no success. I looked in past post and try following suggestions with Cv2, 5,6 but that hasn't worked. One loco will start to crawl about half way between stop and 1 on the throttle and the other loco wont crawl to a little past 1 and it really doesn't crawl.
The loco that crawls and has top speed that I want was purchased used. It has a manufacturer ID of d127. Cv2 is set to 26 and cv5 to 154 I am not able to program CV6. Everytime I try and change it it just stays at current setting. CV29 is set to 38. CV3,4,55,56,57, 66 and 95 are all set to 0.
The loco that I am having trouble with has a manufacturer id of d129. CV29 is set to 38. CV3,4,55,56,57,66 and 95 are all set to 0. I have experimented for hours with Cv2, 5 and 6 with no success. I realize I can't get 100% match but I'm not really close yet.
Since I am new at this I would rather not go the speed table route. Is there a CV I am missing that is influencing the results. Does one of these decoders not support 28/128 speed steps?
Any help would be appreciated.
Were the engines equipped with decoders at the factory or ?? Some engines like Bachmann's DCC-equipped engines generally come with pretty cheap decoders that don't allow you to do adjustments to CV 5 and 6. If that's the case, you might look at replacing the decoder, it's simply a matter of unplugging the one decoder and plugging in the new one - if you can change a lightbulb, you can change a decoder.
I generally leave CV 2 at zero at first, and only add something if the engine is very slow in starting to move. Note too that CV 3 and 4 are start and stopping momentum, if they are set to a high number it could be taking a while for one engine to get up to speed because of it.
Otherwise, what I normally do is start out by setting CV 5 (top speed) to a number - basically just a guess at what might work - and set CV 6 at half of that...like say 160 and 80. The decoder will fill in the other steps in a straight line power "curve". If the engine is slower than the other one you're trying to speedmatch to, raise the CVs to say 180 and 90. If it's too fast, drop it to 140/70. Then try it again. It's basically just trial and error til they match up.
The loco that is performing at the speeds I like is an atlas SD9. The date on the frame is 2008 and it has a plug and play decoder. I do not have the case for this loco.
The loco I am trying to match to the SD9 is an Atlas SD35. The case says that it has a pre-installed Digitrax 146 AX Decoder. This decoder supports 128 speed steps, 4FX functions, and advance consisting.
Thanks,
Scott
Some decoders do not support all the same CV's. when setting CV2 it is better to set CV's 5 and 6 first. If the decoder doesn't support CV6 than skip it and set CV5 to 255, then adjust CV2 as necessary. For now set CV 3 to 31 and CV4 to 0. There is something in the digitrax manual about status editing the decoders for 14/28/128 speed steps but I don't have my manuals handy to help you.