RDUNNIII, yeah I agree with you. Tiny solder pads are no fun.
I do like that Atlas made a DCC Ready locomotive where the user can literally just drop in a decoder that has sound and all the modern features. The old DCC ready boards were okay but all that dropped in was a bare bones old technology NCE Atlas O decoder. I assume all that the user has to do after plugging in the Loksound decoder is add a speaker. Do you guys have any preferences on what speaker to use?
Bill or anyone else, have you guys tried the ESU Power Pack Maxi? I was just wondering if it was worth the added expense.