Signal Booster for Lionel Legacy

The results are extremely promising. It effectively doubled the range from about 40 feet to about 80 feet.

It also worked flawlessly in our garage. It absolutely wouldn't work in the garage with the stock antenna.

My train room is in a separate building on our property which iincludes a two car garage. The train room and garage are separated by a six feet wide storage closet and then a bathroom. The two walls between the garage and train room -- are loaded with copper plumbing and electrical wiring. Yet it worked flawlessly. Oh, and I have another wi-fi router in the trainroom sending out signals in the same frequency range to boot.

There was one area out in the yard about 40 feet from the building where it didn't work. But, there were other areas in the yard 60 or more feet from the building where it did work.

Will be interesting to try the Signal Booster with Legacy on our club layout. But, in the meantime I declare it a huge step in the right direction. Certainly on my layout.

There's nothing exotic here. The Hawking HSB2 is just one of many Wi-Fi signal boosters that have been sold for years for the purpose of extending the range of our home wireless routers so we can use our notebooks and stationary PC's just about anywhere in our homes and garages. Seems all Lionel did was use a totally proven wi-fi transceiver technology when designing Legacy. Conservative and smart. And therefore seems to behave the same as the wi-fi systems we're accustomed to.

This Hawking model is a little more expensive than the one we had been talking last week on email. $63.24 "on sale" at Amazon.com. I chose it because it is AC powered and therefore has higher amplification than the passive hi-gain antennas.

It has a switch selectable signal boost with three positions 100, 200 and 500 milliwatts. Receiver gain is 10-13 dbM, 12 dbM Typical with a noise figure of of 3.5 dbM typical. Which is a nice signal to noise ratio. I tested on the 500 mW setting. Comes with a 75 cm cable.

The instruction manual recommends placing the antenna in the highest location possible for the best signal. I also got a 7 ft Hawking antenna extension cable and will play around with antenna placement.

The three signal amplification ranges would seem to me to be beneficial in the case where other clubs are using Legacy at a show and we want to select the minimum power range neccessary for reliable operation on our layout so as to minimize the potential for interference when picking up another club's Legacy commands.

So, now I can sit out in the yard and run my trains in the trainroom. Can't see them of course unless I get a camera like Ira's. Opportunity knocks!! :) :)