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Reply to "Lionel SC-2 and TMCC signal issues"

@BillYo414 posted:

Are you using anything to conduct the plane? I'm new to this stuff but if I follow what you're saying, it sounds like your ground plane needs some work. Maybe some chicken wire stapled under your layout?

What I have been using so far for tracks is I take metal tape that's used for heating and sheet metal work, and I tape it below all the raised tracks. I connect all this metal tape together mostly by taping on top of tape, but some places have wires.  This doesn't work by itself, but what fixes the situation for trains is grounding that metal tape to the 3rd prong of the wall outlet. I have an actual degree in EE, but I have zero idea what's going on here myself really.

Honest, I thought I figured this out, and tried a similar thing under the track, of putting metal tape under the layout, and then putting the SC-2 below that with various combinations of wires from the U pin connected to the SC-2 or with wires beneath it, and nothing helps.

I do see posts here in this forum where people declare that it's not a ground plane, and that something else is going on, but mostly they're talking down the official Lionel explanation and I have yet to see someone really say what's going on here.

I wish I could just modify this SC-2 to be honest, and wire it in directly and rip out the antenna, but not sure if that's possible.  I have a PowerMaster that's connected right by it that basic works perfectly no problem.  The whole TMCC signal thing is pretty confusing, especially coming into a layout that's already built.

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