Legacy antenna upgrade

The Hawking seems to be the antenna of choice although a lot of folks dropped it once V1.3 came out.

I can go two rooms away and downstairs and still control the trains, I'm running 1.4 here.

I get pretty far away from the layout at home and the club with 1.3.  why would you want to get much farther away, what if something bad happens?

I have the hawking antenna and 1.4 and still loose my signal. I'm convinced I have electronic gremlins in my house. Cordless phone is all static in back bedroom and in the basement(train room) Can barely pick up the most powerful radio station in Cleveland (I live 8 miles from downtown) in the garage....the list goes on and on. I just learned to live with it

That's amazing Bob!  I think I probably have more wireless electronics in my house than 99% of the rest of the country, and I don't have that kind of problems.  Between four wireless routers, a cell phone repeater box, two different sets of wireless phones, a number of wireless alarm components, not to mention garage door openers and RF remote control boxes, I still manage to communicate pretty well.

The only thing I can think of is all the TV station towers are all around us. We are on the highest area of cuyahoga county. When I look in the sky at night all I see is blinking red lights. Kinda of like when my daughter lived in Pittsburgh on Mt. Washington, her cell phone would only work in one little corner of her apartment. They told her all the cell towers are up there and they all fight for the signal.

Well, we're down in a valley, which is why I have the cell phone repeater box!   So, no TV towers or cell phone towers to step on my RS signals.

Do you have any tube type florescent lights? I had a customer that had florescent lights in his office but only used them at night. We put in a wireless keyboard mouse combo and a wireless router. These worked fine until he had to work late one night. All heck broke loose nothing worked exactly right. It took me a while to put together the clues as it worked fine in the day when I was there. Turn the lights on equaled many problems. Turn then off all the problems went away. The noisy ballasts needed to be changed out to electronic ones.

Ron

You might check:

CFL fluorescent fixtures

Wall warts (I have an Ipod charger that wipes out my AM radios bigtime!)

Dimmers

Power control devices such as X10, especially controlling power to the trains

Tube fluorescent fixtures

Any electronic device that might have line bypass capacitors that are arcing, even when the power isn't on.  Unplug everything electronic.

Streetlights - sodium or mercury vapor types

I once had an intermittent noise due to a neighbors fish tank heater that had arcing on the contacts when they were closed.

A portable radio is a great tool for "sniffing" for culprits.

The odd thing is that I'd expect the electronic models to be far more electrically noisy.  Of course, they also have a much shorter life!  I have a bunch of fixtures around the house with the old ballasts in them, they've lasted more than 20 years.  In that time, three of about 30 have died.  I've replaced them and a couple more (to keep the fixtures matching), with modern electronic ballast models.  Of the six electronics ones, two have failed in less than three years, and another is cooking bulbs so fast that I'm sure it's defective as well.

Although X10 controllers could be the culprit I have been running them for years without any problems whatsoever. With LED lighting you need to use the appliance controller module as LEDs don't provide enough current flow for the lighting modules. I use them to turn on my Legacy base and the layout power and I have had no signal issues in my 16 x 27 trainroom.

Ron