AutoPilot questions

[lpdsn]

If the stops prevent the drive extending /retracting fully.Does this cause any problems with burning out the motor?
I never fitted the rudder position sensor and noticed that if I was stopped still in the water the drive would go to its stops on either tack and I always shut it off but wondered if it would do any damage if I did not

The drive shouldn't be hitting the stops when the autopilot is working. Part of the commissioning process (for the Raymarine Evolution electronics anyway) is to teach the autopilot the limits of the helm movement, so the drive should stop itself before the stops ever come into play. The question of the effect on the drive of using max lock applies when using full lock when hand steering - it's necessary to make sure that full helm movements can be made without forcing the quiescent drive to go beyond its limit of travel.

 

[skyflyer]

The actual angle of rotation achieved can be increased by shortening the tiller arm, (or effectively doing the same thing by drilling a new fixing hole in it, nearer the rudder post) but in doing so you may start to come up against other problems with limitations on the maximum permitted angle between the drive arm and the horizontal as there is a ball joint at the point where it connects that has limited freedom of movement.
Also if you increase the angle of travel then you increase the force required by the arm.
I made my own tiller arm from scratch and in order to calculate the best angles etc i ended up drawing out a full size diagram on paper using compasses etc so that I could check all the angles at all points of travel of the arm.
Even so the geometry of myself et up means that i get more travel one way than the other (in practice this is eliminated by the set-up procedure which balances the movement to be the same each way) but it means that if turning in a tight spot I get more (manual) rudder travel - and thus a tighter turn - to port than to starboard!