I had a Raymarine ST4000 wheel drive that worked but in some circumstances not well. Trying to use it upwind into waves had it steering all over the place, and playing with the damping settings didn't solve it. At lower speeds it would hunt a lot.
At the Toronto boat show I spoke with the people at the Raymarine booth, and was told to add a rudder sensor. Since I have no play in the steering and the geometry doesn't change I also wondered why it would make a difference. The answer was that the software handles the steering differently when it can measure the rudder angle directly rather than stepping the drive motor and calculating the angle. I added the sensor. My guess is that it didn't do much. Maybe a bit more stable upwind, still not great though. Michael Brown Windburn C&C 30-1 Date: Sun, 11 Oct 2015 12:06:07 -0400 From: "Rick Brass" <rickbr...@earthlink.net> To: <cnc-list@cnc-list.com> Subject: Re: Stus-List Autopilot Recommendations Message-ID: <000001d1043e$bd619ef0$3824dcd0$@earthlink.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >From all the comments over the past few years I know that David's comment is true. But I have always wondered "WHY?". What changed to make the rudder position sensor essential? Over the years I've had an Autohelm tillerpilot (800 I think) on a 27 and a Raymarine 1000 tillerpilot on my 25 with tiller steering. A Raymarine 3000 belt driven wheel pilot. And there is a Navico 5000 wheel pilot on my 38 (I'm sure it isn't older than dirt, but it is almost older than plastic). None of these has a wheel sensor - relying only on heading information from the fluxgate compass built into them to steer the boat. All of them worked well. The Navico took a bit of adjustment to the settings to optimize performance (I suspect the PO had never set it up since the wheel lock to lock setting was the default and not the proper number for the boat), but once set up the wheelpilot will steer the boat for miles and miles without a variance from the desired heading of over a degree or two. So what has changed with the newer autopilots to make the rudder position sensor so important? Rick Brass Imzadi C&C 38 mk 2 la Belle Aurore C&C 25 mk1 Washington, NC
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