Hi,
I am wondering if somebody could help me speed match? I have the NCE System and Decoder Pro. I want to get all my locomotives to run where 1 step on your throttle equals 1 mph and where 2 step equals 2 mph, 3 step equals 3 mph. I want to make it to where every step on the throttle equals what it says it is. If it is step 20 the locomotive should be running 20 mph. I would like it to make out at 60 mph. Could somebody tell me what to do?
rcfaw I am wondering if somebody could help me speed match? I have the NCE System and Decoder Pro. I want to get all my locomotives to run where 1 step on your throttle equals 1 mph and where 2 step equals 2 mph, 3 step equals 3 mph. I want to make it to where every step on the throttle equals what it says it is. If it is step 20 the locomotive should be running 20 mph.
Well, that's not going to happen. With the NCE system the display will show up to (I believe) 126 speed steps if you are using 128 speed steps, or up to 28 (26?) if you are running 28 speed steps. So there is no way that you'll get a 1 for 1 speed step/mile per hour graduation.
rcfawI would like it to make out at 60 mph.
Not sure what you mean by this, but if it involves a better half it could be dangerous.
What top speed do you want? I did a lot of speed matching for a friend who wanted the top speed for all his engines to be 60 smph. So I used decoderpro to set speed step 28 (decoderpro only sets 28 steps) for 60, speed step 21 was set at 45, speed step 14 was set at 30, and speed step 7 was set at 15 smph. Then decoderpro has the ability to draw a curve through those set points.
EDIT: Of course it occurs to me that you can get close to what you want by only using the first 60 speed steps of the 126 step range. But that would be like only using about 50% of the throttle. Not sure why you'd want to do that.
Not only what Maxman said, but unless you have good decoders, getting steady operation of all locos at 1 SMPH may not be doable.
To get something approaching what you want, you definitely have to use speed tables. But speed tables only have 28 steps, although some decoders will interpolate values and still use the speed table in 128 step mode, but that means there is no way to make the in between steps exact, as each value in the 28 step table accounts for about 4 steps in 128 ss mode.
In addition, you will need some sort of speed meauring device - you won't get 1smph resolution using the "count off the time between a fixed distance' method.
I'm guessing you got the idea from the way MTH locos work - well, they can do the 1smph per speed step because they have a sensor on the motor shaft that feeds absolute speed back to the decoder so it can maintain that.
For any fairly modern decoder except Tsunami, you can use CV2, 6, and 5. Set the throttle to speed step 1, and adjust CV2 up untilt he loco starts creeping. Go to full throttle and adjust CV5 to something less than 255 so the loco is only going as fast as you want it. Optionally adjust CV6 then so half throttle is approximately half speed, or for a switcher, so half throttle is somewhat less than half speed, or for a road loco, so half throttle is somewhat more than half speed.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
If you want your engines to "max" out at 60 scale MPH, you'll need to adjust CV 5 (top speed) until the engine is going 60 scale MPH when you have the throttle all the way up to full. Then you can put in 1/2 the amount in CV5 into CV6 (midrange). Unless you've set some other type of speed curve, the decoder should create a straight line speed curve so you'd be running around 30 at half throttle and 60 at full, which means each speed step would be about 1/2 scale MPH.
Remember that the more speed steps it takes to increase speed by 1 scale MPH, the easier it is to precisely control the engine and get smooth starts and stops.