BLI F3 and F7

[peteski]

Well sorry, but your interpreting is in left field as usual. The word construction never appeared in my post. When a someone talks about gearing there talking about the gears not anything else. end!

Whatever you say buddy!  What you wrote came out of your brain, and my brain is not interpreting it your way. Obviously, you're a right-fielder. 

[coosvalley]

We're arguing about what here?

Seriously

 

[peteski]

We're arguing about what here?

Nobody is arguing - I just didn't interpret rrjim1's statement the way he meant it.

[OldEastRR]

  I think the Chinese engineers designing these models thing they are children's toys which don't need to be precisely designed.

Maybe why the Japanese-built N scale is so good because N scale is the primary scale in that country. They know it's not a toy.  I wonder what scale is predominant in China ... do they even have a domestic model railroad community?

[cgw]

Question for Mark,   What command station/Booster you were using when you evaluated the BL F3/F7?   Performance of these units may depend on the DCC hardware you have.   With one system I got a real crappy performance could not keep a constant speed the unit would speed up, slow down, stop  reset speed up  and repeat ..   Sorta of pissed that I spent this much money on the consist .    Then I remembered that a friend had some issues with his paragon decoder and it was the command station and the decoder would not play nice (HO diesel) .       Same experience here.     I switched out  the command station with several others that I have on hand and whoa   everything played nice and worked as advertised.    I am reluctant to say which brand combination that did not want to play nice till I contact tech support at Broadway Limited and the dcc command station manufacturer.    With the good command stations The F7 and F3 sets were speed matched very closely out of the box and had very good slow speed performance.   Volume was maxed out too high and I will have to turn it down.  In the next couple of days if time permits I am going to try several other systems that I have stashed around my workshop to see which combinations works and doesn't.   Once that is done I publish the results.    The systems I plan to evaluate come from Lenz (compact), NCE (power cab and power house pro 5amp) , Digitrax (DCS 51,DCS 100,DB 150 and DCS 240, Arnold and a Merg Cbus command system.   

More to come................

 

[atsf3751]

I don't see that as a viable choice for me. Do I have to own every command system because this brand of engine only runs on NCE, that brand only runs on Digitrax? Not my problem to change my layout every time I want to run an engine. I have an NCE layout and only that system. If an engine does not run, too bad for it and the manufacturer.

[ek2000]

Question for Mark,   What command station/Booster you were using when you evaluated the BL F3/F7?   Performance of these units may depend on the DCC hardware you have.   With one system I got a real crappy performance could not keep a constant speed the unit would speed up, slow down, stop  reset speed up  and repeat ..   Sorta of pissed that I spent this much money on the consist .    Then I remembered that a friend had some issues with his paragon decoder and it was the command station and the decoder would not play nice (HO diesel) .       Same experience here.     I switched out  the command station with several others that I have on hand and whoa   everything played nice and worked as advertised.    I am reluctant to say which brand combination that did not want to play nice till I contact tech support at Broadway Limited and the dcc command station manufacturer.    With the good command stations The F7 and F3 sets were speed matched very closely out of the box and had very good slow speed performance.   Volume was maxed out too high and I will have to turn it down.  In the next couple of days if time permits I am going to try several other systems that I have stashed around my workshop to see which combinations works and doesn't.   Once that is done I publish the results.    The systems I plan to evaluate come from Lenz (compact), NCE (power cab and power house pro 5amp) , Digitrax (DCS 51,DCS 100,DB 150 and DCS 240, Arnold and a Merg Cbus command system.   

More to come................

 

I've noticed a performance difference as well between command stations. My BLI units performed much better with the NCE Powercab than they did with the Bachmann EZ command DCC.

[spookshow]

Question for Mark,   What command station/Booster you were using when you evaluated the BL F3/F7? 

CGW, I own a number of Paragon3 locos and they all perform just fine with my DCC system (a Lenz Set 100, FWIW). In fact, I just got a couple of BLI E6's from the latest production run and they've been gliding around my layout without issue for the last 7 hours.

-Mark

[Cajonpassfan]

Question for Mark,   What command station/Booster you were using when you evaluated the BL F3/F7?   Performance of these units may depend on the DCC hardware you have.   With one system I got a real crappy performance could not keep a constant speed the unit would speed up, slow down, stop  reset speed up  and repeat ..   Sorta of pissed that I spent this much money on the consist .    Then I remembered that a friend had some issues with his paragon decoder and it was the command station and the decoder would not play nice (HO diesel) .       Same experience here.     I switched out  the command station with several others that I have on hand and whoa   everything played nice and worked as advertised.    I am reluctant to say which brand combination that did not want to play nice till I contact tech support at Broadway Limited and the dcc command station manufacturer.    With the good command stations The F7 and F3 sets were speed matched very closely out of the box and had very good slow speed performance.   Volume was maxed out too high and I will have to turn it down.  In the next couple of days if time permits I am going to try several other systems that I have stashed around my workshop to see which combinations works and doesn't.   Once that is done I publish the results.    The systems I plan to evaluate come from Lenz (compact), NCE (power cab and power house pro 5amp) , Digitrax (DCS 51,DCS 100,DB 150 and DCS 240, Arnold and a Merg Cbus command system.   

More to come................

 

Or, it could be simply the voltage the different systems are set to put out and have nothing to do with brand. I always check the voltage with a rampmeter; some decoders overheat and shut down with slightly higher voltages. I've had luck with running on 11.5 V. For evaluation purposes, the voltages should be consistent...
Otto K.

[cgw]

Thanks mark for the feedback,  The Lenz systems seems to be the most system.  (includes the early Arnold system too) no problems encountered in my preliminary testing.   I can also say that the Digitrax DCS 240, DCS 100 and DB100 system  is working flawlessly with the paragon system.    (over 8 hour logged so far no hiccups).   The DCS 51 is acting up a little bit.   need to investigate this further.     Tomorrow I will focus on the NCE systems.    The whole point of the NMRA DCC workgroup is to make any manufacturers  decoders work with any command station....  So far the  it has been working.     If they can only get the throttle busses to be standardized        I can dream cant I........

My gaggle of F units appear to be operating fine with no issues with the exception of two command stations.  Ill be contacting the manufacturers shortly to see if they can shed light on it.   The units in question are older units  >10years old.   It could be that the firmware is way out of date. but they work ok with the ESU and Zimo sound decoders with no issues.     
 
   

[OldEastRR]

I have a number of BLI E's and PA's and while they have some  issues, I got them running right, and they improved with each generation. The most recent E6 set I have is a joy straight out of the box (well I did replace the TT axles with non-TT). This looks like BLI took a giant step backwards. Frustrating to say the least.
Otto K.

Please tell me where you got the new axle and the procedure to replace it! I have a first-run E7 that I want to pull more cars.

[Maletrain]

I've noticed a performance difference as well between command stations. My BLI units performed much better with the NCE Powercab than they did with the Bachmann EZ command DCC.

If your two command stations are like the two I own, my Bachmann EZ command puts about 19 volts on the track, while my NCE PowerCab puts about 13.8 volts on the track.  My club's Digitrax system puts 11.9 volts on the tracks.  (All taken with RRampmeter.)  So, there could be huge differences with respect to over-voltage and over-heating issues.

[spookshow]

CGW, I own a number of Paragon3 locos and they all perform just fine with my DCC system (a Lenz Set 100, FWIW). In fact, I just got a couple of BLI E6's from the latest production run and they've been gliding around my layout without issue for the last 7 hours.

Looks like I spoke to soon. After another 3 hours of running time this morning my E6's are starting to act up - doing the same thing as the F's where every 5-10 minutes one or the other will gradually slow down, come to a stop, and then gradually get back up to speed. And for a twist, they will also occasionally toot their horns.

Maybe these decoders really don't like my Lenz system. Either that, or maybe I'm just having some very bad luck with this batch of decoders. FWIW, track voltage is set to the default (16v, although my voltmeter measures 14.7v on the rails).

FWIW, I have done multiple decoder resets.

-Mark

[Maletrain]

I also saw a stop and start event with a pair of powered E-6s on a Digitrax (11.9 volt RRampmeter) system at my club.  The train was 8 smooth sided passenger cars with grades that I think are around 2%.  The train had run with no issues for a few hours during an openhouse.  When that happened I replaced the BLI E-6s with a pair of Kato F-3s that had been converted to DCC-sound, and those ran with no issues with the same train on the same layout for the rest of the open house period.  Not really sure that the issue in this case was the Paragon decoders, it may have been something in the command station or other control electronics, because other strange things do happen on the club layout.  But, my thinking at the time was that it looked like it might be due to the decoders, so that is why I replaced the locos for the duration of the open house.

[spookshow]

Maybe a false alarm here - I did some extensive wheel cleaning on the E6's and it seems like maybe they're OK again. Didn't help with the F's, though. I tried cleaning everything on those (repeatedly).

-Mark