Thanks for the info, guys!
I printed some tach stripes from 0.050" down to 0.025". I used Avery weatherproof shipping labels and a laser printer, which gave nice sharp stripes, and confirmed the actual spacing with a caliper. Here are the results so far:
- 0.025": Didn't work. The engine took off from a stop to a modest but more or less constant speed. In light of the results with the 0.035" spacing, I'm not really sure why this didn't work at least at low speeds - the time interval with the 0.035" at high speed is far smaller than this one at low speed. But, that's the way it was.
- 0.030": Worked, but seemed marginal, with occasional slight surges.
- 0.035": Works fine. Starts, stops, and changes direction really nice and smooth. Ran it up to speed step 75 without issue. I need to change my accel and decel settings though - since the decoder thinks its going faster now, it takes a loooong time to stop.
For now, I'm going to run like that, and will report back if there are any issues. It certainly had the desired effect - it runs almost as slowly and smoothly now as my ESU-equipped Atlas SW9.
Here it is with the 0.035" stripes on speed step 3:
