Auscision duly replied to my email advising that I should of returned the unit to the place of purchase for a replacement, as was their policy. Pretty silly when you think about it. Mike at DCC Sound found the factory fault and fixed it for me for no cost. Under Auscision's policy, I should of advised Mike to stop work. Pack it up. I pay for postage to South Australia back to Orient Express Models, then have them check to see if it was a factory fault. And then, if it was and if they had another one of the same model in stock send that one back to Mike for continuance with the decoder install. If they didn't have the same model in stock, they would have had to get one in from Auscision, who would have had to pay postage to Orient. Does this sound logical? I don't.
I can't fault the customer service of Mike at DCC Sound. Similarly Orient Express have been good to me in the past. But Auscision's customer service has a lot to be desired!
So the railmotor arrived last week. I have only been able to test it briefly on the programming track as I have stuff all over one side of my layout in temporary storage. I might be able to shift some of it around and get it operating over the Xmas break. I could only hear one of the speakers working, so not sure if the other one has a problem, kicks in at higher speeds, or something else. Anyway the more important thing was that the decoder didn't blow!
Well that's it for this week.
I wish all my blog readers a very Merry Christmas and safe 2014.
Since the last post Mike Walters at DCC Sound advised me that ESU (Loksound) had advised that it was the sound amp on the chip that blew. He suggested a number of possibilities but the best thing would be to send the model and decoder back to him and he would look into what had caused the problem to start with. No point getting the replacement if it was to blow again due to a factory problem with the model's wiring. I thought the postage to Victoria would be a small price to pay to get someone who knew about decoder installs into this model to make sure everything was OK. So I mailed the model and decoder. A few days later Mike was in touch. He advised he found a short in the speaker wire circuitry from the moor board. It looks like the wire insulation had melted a bit more due to a possible factory resolder which caused two wires to touch when the body shell was on. He said he would fix this, as well as give me a second speaker for 2nd class for my troubles. The decoder couldn't be replaced under warranty but under repair. He still gives me a new decoder but I had to pay $42 for the repair, which he sends back to Germany and gets fixed and returned to his stock. I thought a great deal all up. He also suggested advising Auscision of this situation to see if they will come to the party to recompense me for the repair postage. I've duly sent an email to Auscision and wait their reply.
Apart from this no modelling on other stuff.
At the Club Modelling Comp weekend just gone I didn't win anything this year but Lachlan got the President's Award again for his Alaska Rail Road diorama entry.
Until next time.
The day after the last post the Loksound decoder arrived from dccsound. I had to wait until the weekend before I could go anywhere near the shed. Saturday arrived as did some constant rain. Perfect weather for shed time if only the missus hadn't gone out for the morning for a hairdresser appointment (I think it is a devilish plan to have some child free time!). Anyway the boys kept me busy keeping them entertained. By midmorning it was time to take them somewhere. So off we went to the local games arcade down at the shops. We spent about an hour and a half of quality Dad time on the computer games, pin ball machines, and other distractions. And it only cost me $20!
The afternoon arrived and so did the missus. So having spent quality time with the boys in the morning, it was now my turn to have 'me' time. As it was still showery, the grass was too wet to cut, so the shed and my recent purchases beckoned. I put the railmotor on Lachlan's DC layout for a couple of hours of running in between some other things like lunch and a nanna nap! It did look good. Now it was time to put the decoder in. This model certainly was designed better than the 73, as plenty of pre-positioning for DCC. The 21 pin drop in decoder had no problems. The speaker install was the most time consuming. Now for a test of the sound. Sounded great. As all this was done on the central motor carriage it was time to attach the end carriages. This done, I turned the power back on then the decoder. The speaker started sounding a bleeping sound. Then I detected the faint wiff of doom....I mean fried electronics. That wasn't good. I looked a bit further and couldn't find the problem. The 'alarm' might have been a short circuit alarm, but I couldn't see anything obvious. I turned the power back on watching the decoder at the same time. FLASH and POP a microsecond later and the decoder looked stuffed. Oh no, not again!
Well I made contact with dccsound and Mike was very accomodating. I have sent a photo of the decoder and he will check it out. A warranty replacement could be coming my way. Time will tell.
I also soldered up the replacement sugar cube speaker to the 73 and cranked it up. No crackling. Hooray! Now I just have to finish the conversion!
This afternoon I went around to one of Lachlan's friend's house as he was over for a birthday party. The dad of the friend is also into modelling but I hadn't seen his layout for about 12 months. He warned me not much had happened landscape wise as he had decided to convert to DCC and re-position some track. He has purchased an ESU ECos system which is very nice. Everything in the one little unit, including wireless to smartphone! Pretty much like JMRI and others all in the one unit. Perfect for a lone modeller. He also showed me his replacement DCC turntable (Walthers Cornerstone 90') operating. Very nice and smooth operation compared to the old analogue models.
Well that is about it for this week.
It has been a tad crazy of late and time of modelling has been a low priority unfortunately! Re the Zimo decoder, I haven't got anywhere near wiring up the LEDs. About a week after the last post I was pottering around with the speaker and found a crack in the case. Maybe that was the cause of the crackling noise. So I removed the area around the crack and glued back on a piece of 0.5mm styrene to firm up the sound box. Nope - the crackling was still there. So possibly my other suspicion is the cause, namely initially when I went to solder the speaker leads on I hadn't restrained the speaker onto something that wouldn't move and as such the speaker's magnetic was firmly attracted to the soldering iron. So it stayed for longer than it should of soaking up heat while I busily searched for a pair of pliers or tweezers to remove it.
I decided to purchase another speaker to see. While on the phone to Orient Express on Friday I noticed on their webpage they were stocking Auscision VR Walker railmotors, so I had one of those put on the order as well as an early Chrissie present to myself. I then promptly went over to www.dccsound.com (an Aussie company) to order a Loksound decoder with the VR walker sound file on it.
So I was very surprised yesterday (Monday) to have received the order from Orient Express. The railmotor looks very nice.
So sometime this week I will have to go out to the shed and at least wire up the new speaker and maybe run in the railmotor on Lachlan's DC layout while waiting on the decoder to come in.
On the subject of Lachlan, I found some time on the weekend to help him finish his diorama for the Club modelling competition in December. He also wanted to do something on his layout so I showed him how to make graves and headstones for his churchyard.
Until next post. Happy modelling.
The only thing I got around to over the weekend was finally doing something about the replacement Zimo decoder that arrived two weeks beforehand!
After Club Saturday, I had some spare time in the afternoon. So I decided to open up the shed and test out the decoder. So I wired it up just to two of the pickups and the motor wires. And then I applied power. At this point with the first Zimo decoder, things went up in smoke! However on this occasion, we had movement with smoke from the decoder. Hoorah! However the dodgy factory wiring on the 73 was such that it went the opposite way to what I had assumed should have been the correct wiring. No big problem, just reverse the gray and orange wires from the decoder. I was happy with things at that point and left it at that for the day.
Sunday morning a thought transpired of why not wire up the little speaker to see how the thing sounds. The only time I got to do that was Sunday night between storms. After selecting the diesel option CV I applied the Sound On button (F8). And she cranked up. The speaker had some static going through it so I will have to investigate that. Could be a dodgy solder joint, or volume adjustment, or something else. But we have sound. Next step those LEDs!
I must apologise for the lack of posts lately as I've been on holidays for two weeks. Not much happened in the week before going on leave, and as for the two weeks on leave, nothing modelling related has occurred. Once we started putting the hobby room/study stuff into storage I've kind of been busy with other reno type stuff. Quotes, tradies, etc over the hols. So the missus then tells me this evening she wants the hobby/study room painted before the carpet is laid, I said by whom? A painter she says. So I said that's OK. After having the pagola repaired this week I started the painting of the raw timber and reacquainted myself as to why I detest painting! So not sure when modelling will start up again.
While on hols, I received two deliveries, one from MERG for some pocket money projects for PK, Mr Mackie and myself, and the other was the replacement Zimo decoder. So I might have to clear some space in the shed to act as a hobby table so that I can progress with the NSWGR 73 conversion.
As for the shed, I finally decided to buy something I've been wanting to do for years. This year while up the coast for hols, we went to the Eumundi Markets. A wood carver who does signs was still there, so I placed an order. The result was the following:
The other thing I've been contemplating is the purchase of a VR Walker Railmotor from Auscision. I found out that dccsound.com does sound decoders for this model as well. So even though off my prototypes of interest, it is a fine looking model. Might look good cruising around the Club layout when it becomes operational. So I might just purchase this before Xmas.
So if I want to do modelling, it will have to be through the week at night as my weekends are starting to fill up with either house renos, early Christmas catchups, or usual domestic bliss ;-)
Not much modelling happened again last week however I was able to finalise the updates for the Pi HowTo and submit it to PK for publishing in the club newsletter "The Semaphore . It was released the other day and looks good. I might have to pass it by the editor of MERG's journal.
The reason for the delayed post was a nasty surprise on Monday evening when the missus pointed out an ant problem in the study/hobby room cupboard. As I hunted for a possible nest behind all the books in the cupboard I discovered a rather large break in the bottom of the wall in the cupboard (built ins). The timber looked like it had rotted away by dry rot. Initially I thought it might have been the base/floor plate of the wall framing. As I wasn't sure if this was structural or not, I had to organise a carpenter/builder to come and tell me the bad news or not. I didn't sleep much that night worried about the dosh needed for a repair. As the room is lined with old style fibro sheeting (ie asbestos!) I say "Cha-Ching!" signs before my eyes! The next problem was getting a tradie to actually come out. Eventually I had a guy come out and he gave me the best news for the day. Its not structural and can be fixed very easily. The timber that had rotted was the old boxing they had used when the concrete slab had been poured, but never removed as it was too difficult to do so. "Just clean out the rotted timber and bog it back up with Silaflex sealant". Fantastic news.
Unfortunately as we have now cleaned out the cupboard and had made a significant dent in cleaning out the room in anticipation of a major repair job, the missus then says "Well we may as well clean out the rest of the room and re-carpet it!" As the current carpet is threadbare I couldn't argue with logic like that!
So now that the hobby room is now a work in progress and most of the hobby stuff is packed up, I'll just have to see what I can manage hobby-wise. It might be more around the Pi, or if I can work out which box the missus packed things up in, I might be able to get back to the 73 conversion once the replacement decoder comes in from Europe. No word on that yet! Ot maybe even learn a bit more around the configuration of JMRI. I'm sure I can sort something out!
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