Well, you don;t HAVE to use it. But it IS far more realistic than the old way of manual notching. For those of us who want actual realtic operation and you know, pay attention to the signals, it's a lot more fun. Considering the number of DCC novices in our group, we have few issues of anyone actually running into others. The majority of people that run at club shows don;t even have DCC at home, many of them have just one or two DCC locos they use ONLY when they run at a club show. Even the former chairman of the group uses a different DCC system at home than is used on the club layout. Of those of us that do use DCC at home, I think it was the DCC guy, who recently passed, and myself are the only ones who use the same system at home and at the club. But they've all learned how to select and run their trains, and since the layout is completely signaled, they've learned to obey the signals and not just go because it looks like no one is in front of them.
The majority of the time you are in Full Throttle, you aren;t running witht he throttle disconnected, you're in the stage where the train speed is coming to the throttle, so the knob is active. At least, if you have sufficient momentum plugged in. With no momentum, then yes, you would have the knob on sound control only most of the time, but it works best with a decent amount of momentum. Most systems have an e-stop on the throttle if you aren't paying attention and are about to run up on another train.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Randy,You're right, it's not the same as manual notching; it's worse.
I met Matt at the 2016 NERPM meet in Enfield, CT and he showed me the Full Throttle feature on his demo track (approx. 8 feet long). Then he allowed me to try it. IIRC, this is what happens: you hit a button and disengage the motor control and engage the Full Throttle feature. You turn the knob to rev up the sounds, then you hit the same button and go back to motor control. Turn the knob and the loco starts moving. To make more revs, you hit that button again and go back to sound control (disengaging the motor control), then hit the button again to go back to motor control to adjust the speed.
To slow down, you hit the button and go to the sound control that disengages the motor control, turn the knob to drop the sound rpms, then hit the button and go back to motor control to slow the speed of the loco. And so on. It doesn't sound easier to me. In fact, it sounds a lot harder.
What I really, really don't like is that you can spend an awful lot of time running your engine without actually having any control of your loco at all (other than the sounds). There's been far too many times that I've witnessed fellow club members and myself run into trouble when you think you have control and you really don't (the "I'll accelerate out of the yard here and oops, forgot to throw the mainline switch..."). I can only imagine a bunch of trains running on the layout where half the time they don't have speed control because they're fiddling with the prime mover RPM's. It's a wreck waiting to happen.
Loksound has had manual notching all along as well. This is not even close to the same thing. I think if you watch Matt demonstrate how it really works, you will see. The best of the bunch there I think was the one with Ken patterson when he runs it on Ken's layout. The demo he did with MR that's on MRVP, he doesn't run the train for any distance so you really don't get a feel for it. A shame because there are some nice long grades on the MR&T that would be perfect to demo it on.
The big difference compared to manual notching is that with Full Throttle the loco comes to you - with manual notching you then have to manually notch down while advancing the throttle. ANd it always was an either/or - either you had automatic notching, or you had manual notching. Yoiu could always in some ways simulate the loading up part of starting a heavy train with Loksound simply by adding some momentum to the loco and juggle the throttle knob. A quick burst of speed would rev up the prime mover but not affect the loco speed, but this is easier.
What's funny is that manual notching has existed at least since the first Soundtraxx DSD decoders from ~15 years ago. It was pretty simple; the throttle knob contolled the speed of the loco, and then F6 (up) and F7 (down) controlled the sound effects (which could be re-mapped). One could sit there and rev the engine without moving, or put the engine in idle while coasting down hill, etc. No matter what, you always had direct control of the loco with the knob.
LokSound's idea is to disconnect the throttle from the motion of the loco, then use the throttle knob to rev up or down the engine sounds. Meanwhile, you've lost control of your engine until you go back to direct control. To me, this is a really bad idea. It reminds me of the old Digitrax DT100/UT-1/DT300 throttles, where it was possible to throw mainline switches using the throttle, but if you did so, you lost control of your train until you left switch mode and went back to loco mode. We had a bunch of accidents on our club layout where people over ran a switch or into a caboose because they were fiddling around with switch numbers. The DT400 throttles solved that little problem.
There's also a video here in MRVP with Matt from ESU demonstrating how the Full Throttle works, and there's also one of Ken Patterson's "What's Neat" videos on YouTube where Matt stops by and demonstrate how to use Full Throttle.
Basically - you do NOT just engage Full Throttle and then turn up the knob - in a diesl the prime mover will load up, on a steam loco the chuffs will become sharper and more labored, but the actual speed of the loco will not change. You need to disengage the Full Throttle to allow the loco speed to increase. The whole idea is that you are increasing (or decreasing) the load on the loco, independent of the speed of travel, with the additional ability to then bring the speed of the loco up ro down to match the sound. So as you describe, it's working perfectly as designed - you're just missing the part about changing the actual travel speed.
This sounds like it might be a feature for diesel, largely, but would you not have to set a desired speed, say 15 mph up a solid grade, and then engage that feature to make it sound as if the engine were labouring just to hold that speed? If you turn off the feature, but don't alter the speed immediately afterward, the loco will still continue apace.
Note that I have no experience in this, but I doubt the feature is as buggy as all that. There must be a step you're missing. You can download the manual for that particular decoder at LokSound's site. I have all my decoders' manuals in digital form saved on my hard drive.
I have "converted" several of my Loksound decoders to "Full Throttle" and I admit, there is a "learning curve" to using the functions with any kind of reliability.
To me, the whole trick is to be sure you have F9 engaged or not engaged as appropriate.
There were times when I dialed the throttle down but the train kept moving. So it turns out I was turning down the "Prime mover" sound but NOT the train speed.
So I had to hit F9 to return to "motor control" mode in order to actually reduce the train to where I wanted it.
Every brand of decoder has their own little "operating scheme" and it can be a pain to try to learn them all!
http://www.esu.eu/en/products/loksound/loksound-full-throttle-diesel-features/
Hope that helps, Ed
I just picked up yesterday the Athearn UP FEF3 844, with "full throttle" loksound. Either it is horribly malfunctioning, or the "full throttle features" are a complete waste of time. In testing the loco only, I can throttle up to max and have it make an entire circuit around my layout (double dogbone 12x24) as though it was on step 1 of 128 step throttle control. Sometimes hitting the stop doesn't stop at all, and the throttling down also does not stop the loco. I had to kill the power twice to stop it last night. Haven't called Athearn yet, but probably will once they open today. Anyone else with such issues?
Thanks to a complete lack of CV list, I would have no idea where to begin to disable the "full throttle" features to see if that solves all the issues I'm having.
I'm not a noob to DCC but neither am I an expert, FWIW.