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[quote user="rrinker"] You will need very heavy wire, #12 at least, for the power bus. Even #12 will exhibit noticeable voltage drop over relatively short lengths at 10 and 15 amp current levels. Again, the whole point of NOT having one mosnter booster is to prevent the voltage drop. There is a low power signal (in the Loconet cable, it's the Railsync lines) that are used by each booster. That signal is what is used to drive the Booster's output to replicate the same DCC waveform at full power for the rails. Even if there is some reduction in amplitude of the Railsync signal over a large distance, as long as it exceeds the threshold of the input device on the booster, the booster will be able to generate a full power DCC signal to match. Thus even the furthest point on the layout gets full power without strining long lengths of expensive heavy gauge wire. At your current levels - maybe 10 feet of #12 in each direction from a boostr, so 20 feet of railroad, per booster with 5 amp boosters. Minimum voltage drop with a maximum of 20 feet for a complete circuit.[/quote] Good point. I'm starting to see some of the advantages to the traditional system. I still want to try something like my original thought to see if it ends up cheaper, but many of the posts say that it is the wrong problem to solve. I could still try making multiple small boosters that are 8 amps each, but I would have to do some research. I still haven't found a solid price for the MOSFETs, and I don't want to end up with a system that's more expensive than buying some DB200s because it would defeat the purpose. Someone said the system would pull about 60 amps a few milliseconds before the breaker trips. Would the MOSFETS have to be rated at 60 amps or 15 (or 8) amps? How big would the filtering capacitors need to be? How expensive will the thick wire be? I would probably use landscape lighting wire because it comes in groups of two wires already, but the companies who make that stuff always get away with making it expensive because it's 'special'... If anyone can give me some pointers to what types of capacitors to use or where to buy 60 amp MOSFETs, leave a comment. I'm really starting to wonder if there's a reason people don't make boosters like this. I don't mean "I wonder why nobody makes 30 amp boosters", I mean "I've only been messing with DCC for 2 months, and I'm already having ideas like this. I'm not even old enough to have been around in a time where you needed knowledge of this field of electronics if you wanted to build things! I can't be the first to try something like this! There has to be a reason building your own boosters this way isn't 'the way' if you want to make a large layout". Is it just me, or am I having 'the great awakening' everyone is anticipating? [*^_^*]
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