Forget G-wire receivers. Airwire and Tam Valley Depot have receivers that will work very well with the QSI and most other DCC decoders. I’ve been using them for three years now, and am very pleased with them.
Airwire just released a new 6-amp capacity version of their “Convertr” receiver. ($132 - $138) I have not played with it as it has just come on the market, but I’ve used their 2.7 amp Convertr receiver in a number of projects. Tam Valley Depot’s “DRS1 Hi-Power” receiver is very similar in operation to Airwire’s Convertr, though has a slightly lower capacity at 3 amps continuous, 5 amps peak. It’s also much cheaper, at $90. I’ve used the TVD receiver in a number of locos.
The advantage of using either of these boards as opposed to the G-wire receiver (besides the fact that they’re available) is that you do not have to set the QSI to “Airwire” mode. It works upstream of the QSI. You wire the output of the Convertr or TVD receiver to the track power inputs of the QSI board. You can easily wire the loco for track or battery DCC control, toggling either the track or receiver output feeding the decoder. (Also great for programming!)
The Convertr lets you choose from all 17 Airwire frequencies. You must program the Convertr to the same DCC address as the decoder, as you also need to program which frequency it runs on by setting the appropriate CV. The TVD receiver only works on Airwire channel 16, but you do not have to program a decoder address for the receiver. I’ve run QSI boards with the TVD and G-wire receivers, and there’s no difference in performance between the two that I’ve noticed.
Note that if you have the NCE G-wire transmitter, it does not support Airwire channel 16, so you’d be limited to the Airwire Convertr.
Hope this helps. I would also expect to see similar receivers from other vendors show up as time goes on. If you ask me, this is very much a case of “you snooze, you loose” on QSI’s part. I’ve moved on, not only to new receivers, but new decoders as well.
Later,
K