Last night I decided to go ahead and return my wireless Digitrax DT-400r throttle and receiver.
It all started when I went to program my new AC4400CW. Yes, you need to plug that little 5″ cable to program too. But the kicker was after programming and wanting to run the engine a little, the battery is the DT400r died! The problem is you can’t turn off the throttle. You have to yank the battery everytime. It does go into a sleep mode, but that still sucks down the battery apparently.
So it’ll be returned to MBK‘s, and I already have a new regular DT400 and panel on order from Fifer Hobby.
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So in my readup of the DT400R, I came across this in theDT400 manual:
DT400/R’s are shipped from the factory with tetherless release disabled. This prevents you from accidentally touching the LOCO Key and entering address selection while you are running your throttle in tetherless mode. DT400 can be set up to allow locos to be released from the throttle when it is in tetherless mode (IR or radio) by setting DT400 Option #3 according to the following table.
Now when I read “ touching the LOCO Key and entering address selection”, I mis-understood and assumed it meant you couldn’t release and select a locomotive while tethered, but you can disable this option to allow the feature. Well… I was wrong.
As I found out, the DT400R wireless throttle only supports one way communication, from throttle to booster. Grabbing a Loco address requires 2-way communication. So you can *release* the locomotive from the throttle while tetherless, but you can’t get it back (or select another one) unless you plug the throttle into a loconet panel.
Needless to say I’m pretty bummed to learn of this *after* I bought one, but I think I’ll stick it out to see just how much it bugs me and how often I find myself plugging into a panel. If it’s enough, I may sell the radio version and just go with a standard wired one.
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Picked up a 12 car set of Intermountain Trinity Hoppers this morning on ebay. This will serve as my BNSF run-through train.
I probably shouldn’t have made the impulse buy, but the cars are hard to come by and the piece per car was actually pretty decent. So it was good deal and was hard to pass up. 
I have a Kato BNSF SD-40-2 in the white face scheme, and will probably get AC4400CW to complete the train. I just wish it was available in the new swoosh logo like the SD-40-2 is.
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