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NCE D13NHP and Stewart Hobbies Uniboard - Incompatible?

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  • Member since
    September 2003
  • 10,582 posts
NCE D13NHP and Stewart Hobbies Uniboard - Incompatible?
Posted by mlehman on Tuesday, April 13, 2021 4:30 AM

I have a Kaslo Shops SDL39. Part of the kit was a Stewart Hobbies Uniboard, which sets on top the motior and acts as the wiring board for directional lighting for DC operastion, as well as providing a 8 pin NMRA plug for DCC decoder hookup. Worked fine with the previos NCE decoder  (D13SRJ IIRC) plugged into the NMRA plug spot.

I have been upgrading some of my locos with D13NHP to get keep alives onn board some of the older locos where there's no obvious place to hook up a keep alive. In this case, everything giot hooked back up and no keep alive action. The lights go dead as soon as it's lifted off the rails.

I checked the wiring between the decoder half of the D13NHP and the keep alive part and that seems OK. It's not been run on more than 15 V, so not the problem. After rechecking all the wiring several times, I'm at a loss other than the keep alive was DOA when it arrived here. Before I proceed with a warranty claim, is there any way to test a keep alive to determine if it's good or not?

Or is there something in this mostly superfluous Stewart Hobbies Uniboard that is interfering with the keep alive taking a charge? Perhaps I should remove the Uniboard?

Mike Lehman

Urbana, IL

  • Member since
    March 2008
  • 409 posts
Posted by ba&prr on Tuesday, April 13, 2021 9:28 PM

Are you letting the keep alive  charge up? It can take up to 30 seconds to fully charge it. Try this to see if it works.    Joe

  • Member since
    September 2003
  • 10,582 posts
Posted by mlehman on Tuesday, April 13, 2021 11:00 PM

Yep, plenty of time to charge. Still nothing.

Mike Lehman

Urbana, IL

  • Member since
    September 2003
  • 10,582 posts
Posted by mlehman on Sunday, April 18, 2021 5:42 AM

I pulled the Stewart board and pitched it. This seems to have got the keep alive working.

Mike Lehman

Urbana, IL

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