I have just finished a new RCS installation in an AristoCraft trail car. This was to have Pheonix sound also fitted with a speaker in the trail car that could be switched to the Dash-9 loco as well. My customer supplied the Standard square Phoenix speaker. Once I had removed the body from the chassis floor assembly I drilled out a 1/4" pilot hole through both parts. Then I separated the floor from the chassis and used the pilot hole as the guide for the 2-1/8" hole cutting saw. Firstly I gently cut right through the floor and then partly through the chassis part. Just enough so that I could cut out the sub floor parts and leave the chassis frames in place. Then I reassembled the floor to the chassis.
This will provide adequate volume. The speaker was mounted with small self tapping screws thus:
Next up I glued the two 9.6 volt 2,500 mah SubC NiCd battery packs together. Located and drilled suitable holes for the cable ties, and mounted the packs on the floor with Slicon adhesive. I secured them in place with cable ties.
The switch assembly bracket was fabricated out of sheet styrene. Then I glued the components in place with my trusty silicone adhesive.
Starting from the right the controls are: Main ON - OFF switch, Programming push button, Charge jack, Phoenix volume control and Phoenix programming jack.
Next came wiring up the various components. The speaker selector switch is in the bottom R/H side of the pic.
The Car to Loco connections come out the front of the floor just ahead of the Phoenix P8 sound system.
When the body top is put back on access to the control panel is via the wide opening doors.
All buttoned up and ready to roll.
Apart from waiting for glue to set up the installation took about 2 hours. This set up uses the Spektrum DX5e TX and a clone DSM2 RX. As usual range is at least 200’. There are four sound triggers available. I haven’t checked the run time yet but the owners last trail car with the same batteries powering an SD-45 gives well over 2 hours pulling a short 6 car train. Powering the sound as well may shorten this run time a little.