Pikey

Giles and otherplanet - I've worked out (well, found out, almost by accident) what was wrong. All of my other models have the protocol set to: Type: DSM Subtype: 2 1F Status: V1.3.3.0 AETR Ch. Range: 1-6 The problem ones which showed weird behaviour (two buses and the truck I'm doing for Manchester Model Railway Club) had this set to channels 1-12. As soon as I changed this setting to 1-6 the models respond as normal!

Very kind comments, but anyone who can drive a digger can drive one of these - the controls are exactly the same. :-) At the same show, we also premiered my conversion of an Oxford Diecast car transporter, which can deliver up to 8 of the Turbo Racing minis (we only have 3). My ultimate plan is to convert various Land Rover / Range Rover models, and deliver up to probably 6 of them to the JLR dealership on the layout. The Evoque on the lower deck at the front of the truck is glued in place, partially as I didn't think it was worth motorising the additional piece of floor I'd need to access this position, and also because it meant I could use a bigger battery which is being hidden behind the cab. Its operation is not quite prototypical, as real ones can lower the front of the upper deck as well. I have compromised by fixing this point and only being able to lower the rear part, as it makes the mechanism far simpler - a motor winds in a fishing line which pulls the front bit of the upper deck downwards, gravity pulls the deck down when you wind the line out. The rear ramps are simply mounted to a nut and constrained so they can't rotate, a motor turns the threaded rod which makes the ramps move. The rest is just normal driving motor mounted underneath, and steering servo mounted inside the cab with the receiver. It has no lights for now (Oxford's Scania cab moulding has painted bits for lights rather than actual light lenses, so they wouldn't look amazing), but when I get the Land Rovers done I might include hazard lights for when I park it on the road, getting in everyone's way like the real ones do 🙂 Other improvements I made included cutting off the quite poor moulded wheel holders and made new ones of these out of 0.4mm brass, and I've also cut off the handrails which were massively thick and looked silly - these have been replaced with much finer wire.

How do you make the tail lights come on by themselves, so you can run them as a top and tail?

I don't think that's what's happening. When the model becomes unresponsive, the led on the receiver is on, and I think its supposed to flash when it's told to be inactive via the selecta function. But it's a good idea, I'll check anyway.

Barring a few minor issues, the digger worked very well for two days at Redditch exhibition, and we won 'Best Layout' as voted for by the public as well, which was nice 😀 We did get a lot of weird radio gremlins, whereby models would become non-responsive for anything from 1 to maybe 15 seconds - continuing with whatever functions were operating at the time, so continuing to drive when the throttle is released, for example (!) The problem did appear to be worse when both Jumper T-Pro controllers were switched on, but the bus I've just finished seemed to do it all the time and other models appeared unaffected. Has anyone else experienced this?

I received my yellow 97 and promptly dropped it on the floor 😭 Thankfully, it looks like minor damage to the bodywork such that I can make it look like weathering, loss of buffers and couplings at one end and a bent bufferbeam. All of which Accurascale have said they will send replacements as soon as they have them 🙂 I have a query about the flange squeal though - does anyone know, or can explain, how it actually works? It works extremely well on my other DRS 37, but on this 97 it seems to just be on almost all of the time. I'm assuming this must be something to do with me dropping it, but I'm curious to know where the sensor is and how it works so I can maybe try and adjust the sensitivity of it (?)

I've got A Remote Depot out in preparation for Redditch show this weekend, so I thought I'd film a proper video with it in the correct location. I also had two of the controls reversed (had the main arm on the left stick and the dipper on the right stick, which is the wrong way round) - needed to look back over an old GoPro video I took when we hired a mini digger to see how the controls should be, and now that I've swapped them over it feels so much more intuitive to operate 🙂

Video as promised, excuse my slightly ponderous driving I'm not quite used to it yet:

The arm is all 4mm motors with screws on, driving an intermediate shaft with a z12 and another screw, driving the output shaft which has another z12 and the cylinder on the end. The cylinder rotates and there’s an M1 nut in the end which drives up and down a threaded rod to produce the motion. It’s a good design, everything’s nicely hidden

Well its been a while! Mobile excavator, might have been worth a topic all by itself, but I've nearly finished it now so its too late for that. https://www.shapeways.com/product/ALGKTDDJE/mobilbagger-1-87-rc?li=shareProduct I'd been meaning to tackle one of these for years, but the control methods I'd previously seen were somewhat clumsy, and it was only when this kit arrived on the scene that I finally decided to take the plunge. I've put together kits before (the Das87 4WD LandRover you may have seen on Luke Towan's youtube channel) but they always seem to have brass components which never fit together properly without hours of work, so I was a little worried that this might just be a load of money wasted. And it is a LOAD of money: the kit looks like its £53 on Shapeways, but you have to buy an additional 38t gear which is another £6, then VAT is added, plus processing and extortionate shipping costs, so in the end it comes out at about £100. Then you need £120 worth of motors, gears and bearings. Then you need a receiver and 2 separate ESCs (another £75) plus some other stuff like a steering axle, battery, servo, flashing LED light. And you need to buy the model to convert as well, which in my case was £45 by itself. So total cost runs to something like £350 😬 Mind you, it is a very good kit, with useful instructions, albeit in German, so still takes a bit of lateral thinking to understand what to do even after it's been translated. Even better now you can get it printed in the self-coloured tan resin rather than mine which was clear and needed to be primed and painted, and on the last bit of the digger arm the paint has really suffered just with handling it to install the bucket motor transmission. I've enjoyed making it, and while it definitely is NOT for beginners, it is perfectly attainable if you're really careful and patient. I'll post a video of it working shortly, but for now here are a few build pics: Drive motor and steering axle: Slew motor on top of completed chassis: Slew motor/base inserted into model: RX and one of the ESCs installed: both ESCs, cab with flashing light and battery installed: Digger arm with rotating cylinders: The finished article:

Update - the tender was on the closest of the two coupling holes, moving this to the other hole has solved the derailing issues. Weirdly there is nothing about this in the manual! It sounds and looks amazing! The firebox lights up when you operate the sound for shovelling coal, and turns off again when you’ve finished 😀 I think I can put the chimney back on to a satisfactory standard, if that’s the only issue then I’ll just glue it back on 🙂

Does anyone else’s not run properly/at all around curves? Mine arrived yesterday in a box that looked like it had been stamped on quite hard from the top and the side as well (the side had been taped up to try and hide it), inner plastic packaging was very distorted and it derails on every curve on my layout - none of which are even remotely close to R2. Also the chimney broke off when I touched it!

Any idea when the EM gauge wheelsets will be available? :)

I've been absent from this forum ever since it completely changed and now half the page is covered in adverts, with additional adverts and videos popping up all over the place. What a shame :( Anyway, I have a facebook page, so if you'd like to keep up to date with what I'm doing just search for J P Models. I'll be exhibiting at the Cheltenham model railway exhibition at the end of October too :) I'm doing a couple of tractors just now, one with a bulldozer blade and one with a front loader, and I'll be tackling a reach stacker and a wheeled 360 excavator in the near future.

That looks good, well done :-) Where did you get those plastic bevel gears from? I'm using brass ones from Sol Expert which cost about £15 a pair (!) I've used motors like that with a gear ratio of 1:50 on a bus, it seems to go at about the right pace.

https://teknikart.eu/en/290-miniatuura-p10044.html and https://teknikart.eu/en/291-dccar-dip8-l6.html

Over the last few weeks I've been doing some work on the Faller Car System I've got on my garage layout at home. I now have 5 vehicles - three standard Faller vehicles plus two I've modified myself - and the latest one is a Scania timber lorry which I've chopped all the timber stuff off and made it into a simple flatbed. With a home-made route choice and stop section (servo pulling a bit of fishing line to bend the wire, and another servo-operated magnet that operates the reed switch on the underside of the vehicles) I can now bring in a flatbed truck and load it with my telehandler. It stops and starts abruptly, but its just a bit of fun

Recommend the Orange TX6 or TX10 for around £80/£90. The adjustments possible on the channels are extremely useful for fine-tuning the speed of motors that do (for example) ramps at the rear of my beavertail truck. These can be operated at 10-15% of full speed just by adjusting a menu on the transmitter, allowing you to get exactly the speed you want. You can also flip channels if you wire the motor up wrong and it goes backwards, or if you have to install the servo backwards and it goes left instead of right Also, you definitely need a hoist at high level on the warehouse to lift something on/off the lorry.

The axles they come with tend to be far too short for 1:76 wheels, especially bus and lorry wheels. I have found that 1mm pins intended for circuit board use (I think) are suitable longer alternatives, and I just drill a 1mm hole in the model's wheels, insert the axle so there is a tiny amount of free play, and add a tiny drop of superglue to the outside. You can see this from the outside, but I am happy with this small visual intrusion because of the amount of work it saves doing it the correct way (ie your way). This has worked very well for the 20+ models I've converted thus far.

Excellent work making the front axle! You can buy plastic ones at whatever width you specify from KKPMO, if you fancy doing it the 'easy' way. They're not without issues, but it saves making the whole thing from scratch https://shop.kkpmo.com/product_info.php?info=p927_steering-kit-a-in-small-0-5mm-steps-milled-1-87-or-smaller.html

Yes, its three LEDS in the beacon, which are operated in sequence by a tiny chip.

I've only found suppliers in Holland for the rotating LED beacons so far, and they're not cheap - the beacon and the chip to control it I think came to about £25 including postage (!) but they do look very good.

Still not got around to the actual crane - its all prepared, just need to find the time to do it. In the meantime, I fitted a 'rotating' beacon to the Green Goddess I did earlier:

My second HIAB crane lorry is driving and steering, with emergency beacons, test video below. This is the same chassis that my yellow one is based on, a Cararama Mercedes box lorry with the back chopped off. Pleasingly, the inside of the box is detailed with a slatted base which looks great as a flatbed by simply painting it brown, and it covers a slim 350mAh battery which I think is a better way of doing it than disguising a battery as a tarped load on the bed. The last part to do is the crane itself, you can see the white blue and green pairs of wires sticking out ready for connection to the three motors.