Model Railroading > HO Rapido Santa Fe Rotary Beacon Issue

Received 3 HO Rapido Santa Fe GP38's last week and got to the MR club this past Sunday to program them. All went well until putting them on the main line to run them. After muing them I found that the rotary beacons did not function on any of them, all other functions seem to have worked as they should. F11 is the function key for the beacon, tried many things over the last few days and still no working beacons.
Has any one else had this issue and if so what was found to be the problem?
Any help with this matter will be gratefully appreciated, thank you.

coaltrain45



 

A friend bought a BN E9, and noted the LED rotation is counter clockwise, and it should be clockwise. Is there any way the turn down the brightness on the Rapido Stratolights?

I know on the BN GP38's the beacons were programmed as dimmable headlights, and you needed to reprogram that output as a beacon.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

M-636 Wrote:
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> A friend bought a BN E9, and noted the LED
> rotation is counter clockwise, and it should be
> clockwise. Is there any way the turn down the
> brightness on the Rapido Stratolights?

Yes, if it has a ESU decoder. ESU decoders have the ability to dim LED lights on the outputs. If using JMRI, just figure out which output goes to the beacon and dim it. I love this ability because dimming LED lights with resistors is VERY tricky.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

Thank you for your ideas, I will be back at the MR club on Sunday and will check this out. We have both JMRI and Lok programmers, will advise on any cure to the issue. 

coaltrain45

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I've had trouble operating certain lighting features with ESU when consisted. One thing that has worked for me sometimes is to go to the unit you want to to activate the feature on directly with its address (not the consist address) , and enable the function from there.

For example if you have three units in consist #120 and you want to turn on the beacon in unit 4834, enter the address 4834 then F11 to turn on the beacon.

Having the ESU programming software on your own computer is very handy, regardless of connection to the programmer hardware set itself. That way the sound package can be downloaded and thoroughly checked out before using the time to load the decoder. Off-line might be the better description.

There's also a way to make changes with the ESU menus and then have the software list them as CV's. From the Menu on the top use Tools / Show changed CV's. Of course you have to change something before the menu option highlights and lists the CV's. Useful to better understand what's going on but also take the list and move over to JMRI decoder Pro to change the list of CV's.

The Sound slots can also be checked out on the ESU programmer S/W. For example, one of the Sound files has a nasty air compressor noise that was very loud until the Locomotive was commanded above a certain notch, well sometimes you just don't use that end of throttle so the compressor noise was always on and very loud. Went into the sound file and found the CV's to turn down the volume for just the air compressor. Used the ESU 'changed CV's' list, then went to JMRI CV's tab to change the data on the list of CV's, then write the CV page to the decoder. It worked great and the locomotive sounds very much better. There's lots of little brake exhaust noises that were being blown out by the compressor noise. While I was at it I cranked up the Dynamic brake volume, awesome.

+ re-wording, re-wording and then re-phrase.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/14/24 18:40 by TCnR.

funnelfan Wrote:

> Yes, if it has a ESU decoder. ESU decoders have
> the ability to dim LED lights on the outputs. If
> using JMRI, just figure out which output goes to
> the beacon and dim it. I love this ability because
> dimming LED lights with resistors is VERY tricky.

ESU's ability to dim outputs is not without its faults, however, especially when dealing with lighting effects and LED's (even if it is set in "LED mode"). When dimming one of these outputs and when using LED's, you will begin to notice a incremental degradation with regards to the effect's quality as you increase dimming settings. Therefore, it still might be best to get the brightness in the ballpark with resistors first (you have to add a resistor in many/most custom installs anyway). However, adding or changing resistors could be an issue with a factory loco and the warranty.

The way ESU seems to program a lot of effects is with pretty pronounced stair-stepping between bright and dim cycles (as with, say, the gyralite effect) and this stair stepping becomes more and more obvious with increased dimming settings when using LED's (it would probably be far less pronounced or even absent if using incandescent bulbs). IMHO, if there is one thing that ESU is way overdue to upgrade, it's how they program their lighting effects. 
 
With regards to the OP's question, functions can be set up so that they can be activated via the consist address or individual loco's address, 



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 11/14/24 19:05 by tehachapifan.

Oh for the days of Irv Athearn when one took the F7 from its box and ran it without worrying about which direction the rotary beacon whirled. 

RRBMail Wrote:
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> Oh for the days of Irv Athearn when one took the
> F7 from its box and ran it without worrying about
> which direction the rotary beacon whirled. 

Ahh yes - had to run FAST just to get a decent bright headlight.