Running Bear's January 2026 Coffee Shop

ModelRailroadForums.com is a free Model Railroad Discussion Forum and photo gallery. We cover all scales and sizes of model railroads. Online since 2002, it's one of the oldest and largest model railroad forums on the web. Whether you're a master model railroader or just getting started, you'll find something of interest here.


Status
Not open for further replies.
I don't know if it is a requirement for your story, but MI6 agents (CIA too) are not normally armed.

The Brits have the P226 and P228 in inventory so it's not a stretch to think when it's time to carry a firearm, it might be one of these. It is also possible for the Walther PPS, P99, PPK, or PPK/S to be of service. I am excluding any of the HKs due to bulk, but the VP9 is a possibility too. The USP Compact series can be concealed under a suitcoat, but it's way more bulk than you would want to hide. The USP9 Compact is issued to several departments in Germany as the P10 carried in a duty holster. It's smaller than the full-size, but still the size of my P99s and my P225, just a lot thicker.

As good as they are, they are arguably some of the thickest handguns available.

The British SAS issued the Walther PP as the L66A1 in .22LR for special operations. It is unknown if it was ever issued to MI6 field officers. It was withdrawn in the 80s.

If you need side-by-side size comparisons of these firearms let me know.
 
RhB Michael said:
I don't know if it is a requirement for your story, but MI6 agents (CIA too) are not normally armed.

The Brits have the P226 and P228 in inventory so it's not a stretch to think when it's time to carry a firearm, it might be one of these. It is also possible for the Walther PPS, P99, PPK, or PPK/S to be of service. I am excluding any of the HKs due to bulk, but the VP9 is a possibility too. The USP Compact series can be concealed under a suitcoat, but it's way more bulk than you would want to hide. The USP9 Compact is issued to several departments in Germany as the P10 carried in a duty holster. It's smaller than the full-size, but still the size of my P99s and my P225, just a lot thicker.

As good as they are, they are arguably some of the thickest handguns available.

The British SAS issued the Walther PP as the L66A1 in .22LR for special operations. It is unknown if it was ever issued to MI6 field officers. It was withdrawn in the 80s.

If you need side-by-side size comparisons of these firearms let me know.
Click to expand...
It's actually Magical MI-13 agents, answerable only to the Fae Queen. They have access to everything.

The agent is female. And magical, but not usually carrying firearms since magic is usually faster. But, the baddies are werewolves and such, so silver bullets needed. Think: Selene from the Underworld series.
 


How's this for Chernobyl farms...
BANANA.jpeg
 
migalyto said:
Speaking of that, what's the latest? Don't hear much about that on the news anymore.
Click to expand...
I’ve seen a TV show or two about the evacuated and abandoned areas. Cars sitting in their parking spaces by houses. Just sitting there all this time. Expensive cars like Porsche, fancy JDM, etc.

It was eerie to see what looked like a normal street where people just got up and left ages ago.
 


NYC_George said:
I was just over at the layout I built for one of my friends. As I plugged in the power supply cable to the NEC Power Cab circuit board in the below photo it broke apart. I see a + and - sign on the circuit board. Does anyone here know if I can just solder the power supply leads to the + and - connections. Swal

View attachment 254821
Click to expand...
I'm going to reply to my own thread. I soldered the power supply to the + & - connections on the circuit board and it worked. I would have soldered to the damaged receptacle connections but there were 3 places to solder to, and I couldn't figure out why? I finally realized one of them was just to hold the receptacle to the board

NEC_Power_Cab_Starter_Set_01.jpg
 
migalyto said:
Speaking of that, what's the latest? Don't hear much about that on the news anymore.
Click to expand...
I don't hear much either. The last I heard is that they are slowly releasing some of the contaminated water back into the ocean. Was funny when the chinese started complaining. My response to that was will it keep you guys from fishing in Japanese territorial waters? haha

The TEPCO site used to have a radiation monitoring page where I used to watch the trends. There is a sensor near where I live since I believe there is a processing facility nearby. Was neat to see how it would rise when the winds came down from the north.
 
This has been a busy weekend for me. Saturday morning was spent at the club working on our new Atlantic Gulf & Western layout.
The last module section was put in place, hinged to the adjoining modules and the track connected, making a complete loop of track. A diesel was run complewtely around with out a problem. When cars were added , Murphy joined the activities by a low coupler pin met a protruding track nail.
Corrections were made and a long train made several circuits without problems.
In the afternoon, my daughter came by to help get Christmas decorations returned to the attic. The last item was a pre-lite white Christmas tree with the top section string of lights burnt out. After a couple false starts, we ended up removing all the lights which had been clipped and zip tied to the tree branches.
Today, after church, we shopped for clearance tree lights at several places. My daughter rejected available lights as not enough lights alike or the wrong color wire to go on the white tree. I did find a couple types of glue I needed to buy.
The rest of the day was devoted to a nap and getting caught up on reading the cafe posts and writing this novel.
 
Kusojiji said:
I don't hear much either. The last I heard is that they are slowly releasing some of the contaminated water back into the ocean. Was funny when the chinese started complaining. My response to that was will it keep you guys from fishing in Japanese territorial waters? haha

The TEPCO site used to have a radiation monitoring page where I used to watch the trends. There is a sensor near where I live since I believe there is a processing facility nearby. Was neat to see how it would rise when the winds came down from the north.
Click to expand...
The water they are releasing is less radioactive than normal sea water. I won't comment on the Chinese.
 
Fleabay tantalum capacitor. Straight from CHina. 470uf 16v. Lucky it blew downward to a metal chassis. The rest of the caps are in the garbage can.

EBAY CAP BLOW.jpeg


Didn't damage the decoder, so I dodged the bullet. Lesson learned.
FRONT.jpg


The front grill of this thing is perforated, so it was kinda neat seeing all the smoke coming out of it...
 
Last edited:
I've used a ton of SMD capacitors from China. I make sure their voltage rating is 2x what I'm using if possible but I do have some 16V ones I run at 12V. I put a zener diode in my circuit to make sure I don't stray from that base voltage. I've not had any blow up.

@Kusojiji Was your blow up being used for motor energy on H0 or equivalent scale? The 15V input is probably too close to the 16V nominal capacity of the capacitor. (I am not a EE or electronics guru of any sort but read all sorts of "how to use capacitors" and using them rated at double the input voltage if possible to avoid this sort of thing. 16V is nominal and can vary 5% or 10% or even 20% depending on the capacitor rating so 14-15V into 16V capacitor is cutting it close. I use them with a 12V input that is moderated by the diode to make sure...

ETA: You said you were using Tantalum? Did you have polarity backwards? I think Tantalum are polarity sensitive while the ceramic aren't. I've used both though my board is mostly ceramic due to size... I used tantalum in some test boards.

I wouldn't throw your capacitors away. I'd just save them for N-scale projects or 9v or 5V projects etc.


I designed an N scale light board PCB that takes SMD capacitors for energy storing and the larger capacity capacitors tend to be lower voltage ones (at least in the affordable range)

Here is the base topic -- the more interesting replies are at the end. There are two versions of the board -- v1 and v2. v2 is more efficient in energy storage use by charging the capacitors on the track voltage side and not the 3v or 5v side like v1...

jnsforum.com

JNSF DIY lighting project (PCB based)

This is the base post for the thread for the DIY lighting project PCB board. I am going to come up with an initial try this weekend if I can. I am going to try and make it flexible so you can use 0805 or 1206 sized components (LEDs, ceramic caps), as well as a tantalum cap. Also with or without a...
jnsforum.com jnsforum.com
 
Last edited:
Triple checked the polarity. There is a 100 ohm resistor to reduce the incoming current and a schottky diode. I was using a toma-run board that ayano sells.

Ensured there were no shorts, the capacitance measured good across the leads. NCE only puts out 13.8V and the resistor drops some of it.

The package of 30 capacitors had readings all over the place, from 405uf to 524uf. I measured every one of them and marked them in case I wanted to put them in parallel like I did in this case.

I had to put the burned guy in a plastic bag as it was still stinking up the room an hour later.
 

Attachments

Well, batting a thousand today as I tried to install a replacement decoder into my JN caboose. It seemed to program ok, but then it died. NGDCC function decoder. I guess it is not to be and put the original lightboard back in. It'll just have to have all lights on when running on a DCC track.

No more projects today.
 


Status
Not open for further replies.




Affiliate Disclosure: We may receive a commision from some of the links and ads shown on this website (Learn More Here)

Back
Top