Autohelm blues

[JeremyF]

Had my Raymarine ST4000 fitted Friday. I got a call from the fitter that the Rudder Reference Unit was faulty, but as some might remember from an earlier post, the verdict is out on whether its neccessary, anyhow. All ready to use for the weekend, Sir; I was reliably informed.

Anyway after a cracking sail from Gosport to Yarmouth - 3 hours despite the W wind, great tides this weekend, we decided to swing the compass, or something like that, entailing going around very slowly in 2 circles (while being blasted downstream towards Yarmouth peer ( If you saw some idiot Bav at about 3pm getting in the way, Sorry!

Next was compass alignment - easy. Then moment of truth. Headed upstream for 30 sec, engaged the clutch, pressed Auto and.......nothing. Not a twitch. Tries playing with the + - 1,10 buttons. The display moved, but not the helm. Then, the autothing decided that infact we wanted to go round in circles again, thinking I'd not caused enough chaos.

Anyway, in standby, clutch engaged the + - 1,10 buttons do move the wheel.

Any idea what on earth was going wrong? I'll be on to the fitter tomorrow, but I would like some ammo to fend off the bullshit.

Great sailing conditions this weekend, BTW

<font color=red>Jeremy Flynn/forums/images/icons/crazy.gif
Dawn Chorus</font color=red>

 

[davidwf]

Sounds like he's not connected the drive motor up. On first power up my ST4000 drives the motor for half a second or so. If its not doing that then suspect the connection on the control head to motor.

 

[JeremyF]

I think it was connected because in standby the increment buttons worked fine. It was auto when it either did nothing, or decided it was a homing pidgeon.

<font color=red>Jeremy Flynn/forums/images/icons/crazy.gif
Dawn Chorus</font color=red>

 

[davidwf]

Sounds totally backwards, mine only drives the wheel in auto.

Make sure he's feeding power to the Autopilot and then onto the instruments via Seatalk. The Autopiolt should be the first in power chain. If not it may be that its getting too much voltage drop via the instruments.

 

[quaelgeist2]

I 've had the following stupid problem - just to make sure you have'nt.
My 4000 unit gets power from the Instruments switch, but it's not enough to feed the drive under load.
When you try to engage, it starts, tries to move the wheel and signals oimmediately 'low power'.
THEN I found the separate switch that allowed more power to the drive unit...
And it worked.

chris

 

[JeremyF]

Spoke to the fitter and he left the knackered rudder reference unit attached. So, hopefully things should be sorted when the replacement RRU is fitted. But I'm still suspicious!

<font color=red>Jeremy Flynn/forums/images/icons/crazy.gif
Dawn Chorus</font color=red>

 

[petery]

Thanks for the hint - you've solved the 'low battery' message I get on my tiller version of the Autohelm 4000 - I too forgot to put power on the drive!!

 

[Trevor_swfyc]

You said you calibrated ie going round in circles while being blasted downstream ?
I think that if this was the case you were going round in an elipse which is not good. Calibration instructions say go round in a circle ie at slack tide. Not sure this would affect the failure to work at all on auto. You did say +10 & -10 & +1 and -1 work on Auto ? did you try turning the autohelm off and on again, are you sure you were out of calibration mode.
I recently wasted two hours on a friends boat because he said he was surprised to find the autohelm I had set up for him did not work from the GPS. Most embarasing he said as he was boasting to some friends on board about its ability to follow track from the GPS so they put him on the spot and said show us. He read the instructions for the autohelm "he said" but it does not work. After two hours I concluded nothing is wrong all connections are correct all ouputs from the GPS are correct so I was at a loss. I said lets take the boat for a trip down river and try it out. I set the GPS to GOTO waypoint which immediatly gave Xtrack error zero on the GPS, then pressed -10 & +10 on the autohelm with it on auto it confirmed it was going to go onto 90 degrees which we were approximatly on so I pressed +10 & -10 again and away it went spot on track perfect. He said what did you press on the GPS I explained and he said OH I didn't know you had to press anything on the GPS. I rest my case some people have a mental blank when confronted with more than an on off button. Not saying this is your problem honest.
Anyway try going round in circles again.
All the best.
Trevor