Stayin' Alive

We're still learners when it comes to this DCC malarkey, and every day is a school day.Take my favourite loco in the Minffordd fleet, the Simplex Mary Ann for example.When it was re-motored and chipped for its new digital life we managed to squeeze in a stay alive capacitor which was so effective the loco would continue to run for around 10 seconds after it was picked up off the track.When he was giving the stock a once-over ready for the trip to Porthmadog last week Himself noticed the stay alive didn't appear to be functioning.We hadn't noticed any particular problem with the loco at the show in Glasgow.As usual it was superbly reliable and most problems seemed to be caused by route-setting errors resulting in short circuits. We did notice some of the other operators giving it a prod every now and then, but assumed that was just operator error.It was after a while of puzzling that Himself discovered there is a CV setting on these chips which controls how long the stay alive supplies…