Tsunami Braking Settings

Around here, we have been getting into using the braking function of our decoders. This is mainly a result of our operating session experience in Kansas City with Chuck Hitchcock and Kevin Lyerle who, along with Keith Robinson, have been playing around with this for a while now. 

My first locomotive to use braking functions was HBS 701, which I input CV values in manually using my CVP AirWire throttle. Consequently, I have poor records of that set up, but I like it. Since then, I purchased a booster board from SoundTraxx so I can read the settings off of the Micro Tsunami going through a Digitrax Zephyr command station.

In the meantime, I have spent a couple of hours dialing the HBS 601 (an HH660 by Atlas) using the greatest gift to DCC since, well, DCC was invented, the JMRI programming application. I've now got no. 601 dialed in with a not-too-annoying momentum and braking setup that shouldn't bug operators who are not used to it. I've posted the settings below in case anyone is interested. I still have some tweaking to do once the locomotive gets broken in, and we operate with it some to get a real feel for how it responds under actual operating conditions.

Let me know what you like - I'm interested in the range of likes and dislikes having to do with braking, momentum and the accompanying sounds.

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Micro Tsunami overheating

The CVP CONVRTR chip and AirWire 5000 battery installation can be deemed a success at this point. What is not so successful, is that the micro-Tsunami crapped out after about 15 minutes of running yesterday. It restarted after a few minutes of what I assumes was cooling down. Today I attached an aluminum heat sink to the flat bottom of the decoder using some ArcticSilver 5, which is a high-density polysynthetic silver thermal compound. After getting everything back in the shell with some shifting around of the individual pieces, I ran the locomotive for about 45 minutes with no problems. I'll declare victory on the overheating problem for now.

Things are shaping up nicely, and I can see doing more installations soon, now that I have a feel for the components. So far, I have run the locomotive for about an hour on a single battery charge. The set up is a Tenergy 1-4 Cells Li-PO/Li-Fe Balance Charger + Tenergy 11.1V 1000mAh Li-Po Airsoft Stick Battery Pack from All-Battery.com.

Connection from the decoder to the CONVRTR chip and battery. Just two wires substituting for the track pick up and decoder signals.

ArcticSilver 5 thermal compoind from the Rat Shack. $12.

'Tinting' the heat sink rubs the compound into the micro-grooves and pits of the heat sink surface. Just use a hard (clean) piece of plastic to scrape back and forth on the surface. Try not to get finger oil into the mix as this degrades the thermal conduction. I don't think it is that critical here, but a good practice nonetheless.

The heat sink bound tightly to the micro-Tsunami with Kapton tape. I ended up having to remove the back of the speaker baffle and relocate the capacitor to over the trucks to fit the shell on completely. The capacitor needs better securing, because it is hitting the drive gear every so often making a bit of a grinding noise and adding unnecessary load to the motor. 

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