RC BATTERY CONTROL FOR 2-6-6-2T

[jsordelet]

Hello  after doing my two Bachmann K-27 i also want to do the same with my two articulated engines.  i am going to use the new Phoenix SM18 and a CVP Airwire converter 60 to power the two engines. what i would like to know can i use the Bacmann main board to hook the battery to the converter 60 then the DC18 Input to replace to wheel power pickup.  if that would work then all one has to do is switch over to battery power on the main mother board.  at the same end of the mother board is a DC6 Volt input to activate the chuff sensor.  both are screw on mounts.  right now i am batterey powering my two accucraft C-19 which i had long before Bachmann came out with their.  thank you for any input good night   James S

[Kevin Strong]

You'll need to connect the battery to the Convertr, then the output of the Convertr to the battery input on the Bachmann board. If you hook the battery directly to the battery input on the Bachmann board, then you can't put the Convertr into the circuit, as the battery input is tied directly to the power pins on the socket (J1, pins 1, 2, 11, and 12) That will in essence feed full DC battery power to the Phoenix plug-in decoder, and if the Phoenix is programmed to run on DC, the loco will take off like a shot at full battery power.

The advantage of wiring things like this is that you can then use the track/battery switch to select whether you're going to run the loco from battery powered DCC or track power (DCC or analog DC).

One caveat--if the Phoenix board is programmed to run on analog DC, then you must make sure your Airwire transmitter is turned on whenever you power up the loco for battery power. The Convertr will only pass valid DCC instructions to the decoder if it receives them from the transmitter. If it does not, it passes full DC to the decoder. If the decoder is programmed to run on DC, it will take off like a shot.

Later,

K