Our HO club wants to install a Chief radio system. We have some thick walls to go through. If using the radio system, can we hook-up a UP-3 panel in the other rooms and plug-in a standard hand held control to continue to run the train through the wall with no interference? Or, can we extend the antenna into the other rooms?

Do radio controls need to be plugged in to program decoders?

Does the radio control need to point directly at the receiver?

-- Donald Huck (dhuck@execpc.com), December 02, 1999

Answers

Donald--you may or may not be able to get away with only 1 radio receiver, it depends on what's in your walls. The only way to find out is to buy one and see how well it works, then get another one to fill any gaps. You can put a UP3 in the othjer room and I would recommend it anyway just in case in an emergency you need to regain control of a loco that you accidently dispatch. You can easily just run another length of Loconet cable through the wall and place a radio receiver in there too. You cannot modify the antenna in any way except to bend the wires a little to improve reception.

You must plug in to Loconet to program, aquire, and totally dispatch a decoder. The new throttle that is currently under development will be bi-directional but they still have released the final details.

Remeber this is a radio throttle so no you don't have to point it at the receiver. Even the IR throttle can receive "bounced" signals.

-- Larry Puckett (ljpuckett@msn.com), December 03, 1999.