Reg

All the Lima`s are basically the same

Brian

Ah right .Thanks Brian.

Hi guys! Lungum tempun non vedere!

I am surprised no-one has anything bad or good to say about the Hornby decoders. My 60-odd steamers fleet is mostly Hornby-fitted and I have had no problems… Except that, as I tried my new MRC Prodigy Advance control, some locos tended to fly off rather wildly if placed on the tracks while the control is on. Will be trying my brand new NCE Pro as soon as I manage to avail myself of a 220 V - 110 V transformer (bought it in the States, arrived last Thursday). If the worse should come to the worst, will make do with my old, reliabale Hornby Elite-cum-slave (pity the three-step bureaucratic process to get the functions on and off).

sergio

Lungum tempun non vedere, to you as well Sergio.   Translated, means, "I take a long time to lose my temper when I'm not green." 

I have something nice to say about Hornby decoders, viz:-  The packaging is very attractive.

' Best I can do, mate.  ;-)

Hi Sergio,  In my very limited experience with DCC I have found that Hornby locos run best with Hornby decoders.  I have been playing around lately before deciding which way to go and have tried my Hornby 08, T9, and class 153 railcars with Bachmann, TCS DP2X-UK and Hornby decoder chips.  The decoders were at their default settings and in an all cases I found the performance was superior with the Hornby chip.

Hornby 08 - Runs well with any of the chips fitted, but is a quieter with a Hornby one than the others.

Hornby T9 - Unuseable with the Bachmann chip, the performance is very poor.  It is better with the TCS but much smoother and quieter with a Hornby chip.

Class 153 - When fitted with Hornby chips the 153s perform very well, but are a bit noisy at low speed when the feedback is operational.  With the TCS chip the acceleration is not so smooth, it accelerates in a series of noticeable steps and the motor is noisier.  With the Bachmann chip the performance is very rough and again unuseable.

I also have a Bachmann class 150 and when fitted with a Bachmann 21 pin chip the peformance is excellent.

John, did you remove capacitors on the motors?
Because  the decoders themselves have the necessary capacitors & by leaving the on-board units in place, it interferes with BEMF to give good control & in some cases CVs may need adjusting. Generally Hornby decoders & the Hornby Command stations work well with each other, it is Hornby decoders combined with other brands of Command stations that give problems & it is not the other brand Command stations that cause the hiccups.

The locos were totally unmodified in each case Sol because at  that stage of the game I didn't wan't to do anything that was not  reversible.  I should have said that the command station I was using was a Bachmann E-Z Command.

OK, John understood.
That Command station is also a toy-train controller as it does not allow for adjustments to CVs to give good running profiles. To get optimum performance from DCC, locos ideally need some CV tinkering.
As a starter set, yes, it just does the job.