As a result of reading a thread over on the DCS forum, I'm posting this query to seek an answer directly from the MTH research & design staff: What is the reason for not having the watchdog sent continuously?
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Take a look at Proposed Solution to DCS Watchdog in Yard Tracks and wire one of these up and transmit it continuously, it would be interesting to see how it worked out. 
Robert,
I don't think that an engine receiving a continuous watchdog signal while operating is a bad or disruptive event.
However, one reason could be to not tie up the TIU continuously sending a watchdog command over and over. It's possible that the TIU's CPU is not robust enough to do this while also sending the occasional DCS command to actually make an engine or AIU do something.
In that case, I'd think the little DCS-RC mod that Stan came up with in another thread might be an interesting experiment. Of course, you'd have to have a DCS-RC for each channel of the TIU.
If you have a spare TIU laying around, you could just have a timer with a relay that connected the channel to the track and pulse off every 30 seconds to output the watchdog, then you'd have four channels of watchdog.
Notice I was encouraging MTH to provide the answer, to avoid such ruminations. I can think of several maybe's.
GRJ, I saw that thread, and will leave it to others to try that experiment and report.
