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First Impressions of the NCE Radio Throttle
by Phil Chiavetta and Steve Zeff
(order online here.)
Yes, Virginia, there IS an NCE radio throttle, and
it was our good fortune to play with a “preproduction”
unit this past weekend!!
Physical Characteristics
The components we looked at consisted of a “base
station” that plugged into the cab bus in the usual way and
a Pro Cab throttle that was modified to accept a radio transmitter.
Although we did not test one, we understand that the same or similar
transmitter will be used in the Engineer cab. The base station is
a new piece of equipment about the size of an Engineer cab with
a 3-inch antenna that screws on to one of the flat sides. We found
the modifications to the Pro Cab to be simple and something that
most, if not all, NCE users could accomplish in the field. The radio
circuit board fits in the top of the Pro Cab behind the LCD display.
It attaches to the main Pro Cab circuit board via a wire harness
and to the internal battery compartment with a wire pair. A small
hole must be drilled in the top of the case to allow a 3-inch external
antenna to be attached to the radio circuit board, parallel to the
plane of the Pro Cab. We operated the unit for hours with 4 AAA
batteries without incident.
Architecture
The system is a full duplex system. Radio cabs communicate
with the base station and the base station communicates with the
command station over the cab bus. The command station does not even
know it is communicating with radio cabs. It is the job of the base
station to isolate the radio aspects of the cabs (in range, out
of range, etc.) from the command station and to present a clean
interface of the radio cabs to the cab bus. As a result, we did
not have to update the command station ROM to run the radio system.
Neat !!
Operations
We tested the unit in 3 operating environments. First,
we ran the unit on a small layout in a finished basement. Then,
we moved to a moderate sized layout in an unheated garage with lots
of metal backdrops and florescent lights. Finally, we went over
to our club and ran the system on a large layout in a large room
with 15-foot ceilings. With the exception of operating range, the
unit behaved the same in all of the test environments.
First and foremost, the presence of the radio unit
did not affect concurrent normal wired operation one bit. This means
you can have a mix of wired and radio cabs running simultaneously.
Pressing the Emergency Stop key once turns on the
radio. The LCD will then display some version info. Pressing the
ENTER key changes the display to the normal Pro Cab display including
the loco number of the last loco controlled by the cab. The radio
can be turned off in 3 ways. First, plugging the cab into the cab
bus turns off the radio and makes the cab an absolutely normal wired
cab. Second, pressing the EXPN key followed by the ‘1’
key turns off the radio. Finally, the radio will turn itself off
after a user selectable period of inactivity.
To conserve battery power, the LCD backlight will
turn on automatically only when “important” keys are pressed
that require viewing the screen, such as the Select Loco key. Pressing
any of the function keys while operating a loco did not cause the
backlight to go on. However, the backlight will go on for about
five seconds any time the SHIFT key is pressed.
Thankfully, there is not much more to say about "in
range" operation !!!! The radio controlled Pro Cab ran just
like its wired counterpart.
We could do just about any NCE operation with the
radio controlled Pro Cab that we could do with a wired Pro Cab.
Although we did not try to set the command station parameters, we
did setup and kill consists and program on the main. We could not,
however, consistently program a loco on the programming track using
the radio unit. We do not know why.
Range
The range of our preproduction unit varied greatly
depending upon the operating conditions. It was just marginal when
the cab and base station were separated by an aluminum backdrop,
other scenery, some bench work, and low hung florescent lighting
to as much as 50 feet in a large open room with a clear line of
sight between the base station and the cab. Even the position of
the cab operator relative to the cab and base station made a difference.
Clearly, the placement of the base station is absolutely critical
to successful radio operation.
We usually had warning that we were getting out of
range. The train would still respond to commands, but the display
would slow down and sometimes not reflect the keys just pressed.
Apparently, priority was being given to processing commands as opposed
to updating the display as the range limit was being reached. We
thought that was good. As we would come back into range, the display
would eventually “catch up”.
Instead of waiting for the display to slow down,
we did find a more enjoyable way to “map out” the operating
footprint in each test venue. We selected a Soundtraxx equipped
loco and simply went around the layout blowing the horn with the
radio cab ! The effective range limit was the point we could no
longer reliably turn the horn on and/or off.
Miscellaneous
According to NCE, the base station will support up
to 47 radio controlled cabs. Pro Cabs should be numbered in the
3-17 range while the Engineer cabs should numbered 18-49. Pro Cabs
can be included in the higher range, although the display will not
operate. Similarly, Engineer cabs can be included in the lower range,
although there will be a reduction in response time since the base
station thinks it is talking to a Pro Cab.
We welcome comments or suggestions
from readers; please write
or call.
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