Well, with the heavy snowfalls all over the place I was still surprised to see snow on the ground at Schloss Dandruff tonight. It started about 4 pm and was quite heavy by the time I went to drive home.
"No Drew, thats not the Man-sion..."
Tonight I arrived home to a box from the US,
The contents of which were...
"Hmmm, no not that sort of Zephyr"
I was all set to get out into the Man-sion tonight but 2 things defeated me. The 1st was the power pack, which while capable of 240V inputs, did not want to mate with the local power outlet. The second was a local power cut which reduced us to the miracle of fire. I did manage some reading though.
"I'm just missing the blanket over my head"
8 comments:
whats in the box?
and why does the mark 3 version photo look entirely wrong in the grille department, for those readers with primeval memories...
Not the Man Sion, oh ok, sorry... ya know, small scale - small space etc :-)
I very nearly bought a Zephyr system myself, and know many that have, but I know of several that have stopped working after apparent little use too, which makes me a bit shy of them now, and for the time being I am sitting firmly in the NCE camp.
http://www.nscale.net/forums/showthread.php?16166-Digitrax-Zephyr-Fried
Great snow photo, and I hope you were not too long without power?
I must admit that while I do read the forums, I'm never sure whether to put much stock into these things. You are far more likely to see complaints rather than people writing in to say that theirs work fine, so its hard to tell if its a real problem or just a few units.
Mine seems to be going fine tonight. Reprogramed all the locos with chips and will get back out to the Man-sion when it is warmer.
I've currently got one on the bench to repair. This units belongs to one of the local 9mill lads. The complaint is that it blowing fuse on the power supply feeding it, quickly followed by the question of how to do I get into it? Quickly figured out where they had hidden the screws followed by a prob with a multimeter. Looks like it has diode gone in the bridge rectifier inside. I've sourced replacement and just need to install them. Hopefully that is all the problem is.
Weka
Is it a local power supply or the Digitrax one they sell with it?
I'm not certain what the power supply is being used with it. The blown diodes are inside the DCS 50 unit. The feed requirements to it is 15V ac. I should have a look at it is well to make sure that there is nothing funny with it. Let you know how I get on.
The Mark III Zephyr grille may be "correct" - one of the visual differences between the six cylinder and four cylinder versions: the "six" had a vertical bar dividing the centre of its grille, whilst the gutless four cylinder powered model, came with the plain grille as this picture portrays.
Finally got around to repairing the controller. All it was a was blown diode in the bridge rectifier in the unit. Replaced all 4 devices so that they have the same characteristics. Interesting that they used Schottky fast recovery diodes. These have devices used have PIV of 40V and rated voltage of 28V RMS. I suspect fault was caused by a spike in the power supply. Maybe it might be an idea to run these through a surge catcher to protect them.
Weka
Post a Comment