I have noticed that horn and bell activation is very unreliable when using the Lionel Legacy Powermaster in conventional mode. I have many postwar and modern era trains that just don't work correctly, whether it's an old relay on a PW diesel, or the latest Railsounds Lite cards. In some cases the horn button doesn't work, or horns will activate intermittently - start, sputter, stop etc. The worst offenders are AC powered Pullmor motored engines. In many cases, horns and bells can only be activated in neutral. As soon as the Pullmor motors start spinning, some kind of noise from the motors appears to interfere with the weak DC offsets coming from the Powermaster.
These same engines work fine on postwar transformers, a ZW that was modified with a Zener diode, and a modern CW-80. Everything seems to work except the Powermaster. I have been through 2 Powermasters, having recently upgraded to the 360W version, but no change.
Does anyone know of a component level modification that can be made to the Powermaster to strengthen the DC offsets that activate horns and bells? Or are the offsets set in the software which cannot be modified? If they cannot be modified, could two identical Powermasters with the same TMCC ID be used in parallel to strengthen the integrity of the DC offset signal for more reliable activation of horns?
