B&G Vulcan SOG issues

[mrangry]

I have a B&G Vulcan 9 at the helm with a pair of B&G Triton 2 screens which have all worked flawlessly for the last four years. I noticed today when sailing the speed over ground figure on the Vulcan plotter would randomly jump up to 200 knots (and other very high figures) momentarily then back to six or seven knots which seemed more realistic. This would repeat intermittently over the journey with no time pattern. Also this morning one of the Triton 2 screens failed to power up when powering up the network. Has anyone had any similar issues?

 

[Stooriefit]

I have a similar set up to you. Whenever I've had a query I've always just contacted service.uk@navico.com where Ben has always been very helpful. Personally I'd suspect the underwater log unit and fouling.

 

[mrangry]

I have a similar set up to you. Whenever I've had a query I've always just contacted service.uk@navico.com where Ben has always been very helpful. Personally I'd suspect the underwater log unit and fouling.

Sent them an email a week ago but seems out of warranty inquiries arent too important to them

 

[Stooriefit]

That seesm odd as I was asking about out of warranty matters.

 

[PaulRainbow]

I have a similar set up to you. Whenever I've had a query I've always just contacted service.uk@navico.com where Ben has always been very helpful. Personally I'd suspect the underwater log unit and fouling.

SOG doesn't come from the log, it's derived from the GPS.

 

[PaulRainbow]

Sent them an email a week ago but seems out of warranty inquiries arent too important to them

Navico customer service has historically been very poor.

 

[wonkywinch]

Navico customer service has historically been very poor.

That hasn't been my experience from B&G UK and in particular Ben who I met for the first time at this year's boat show.

I've been somewhat of an unpaid volunteer beta tester for their Zeus S product and to be fair, they have acted on much of my feedback with updated firmware to fix issues I raised.

 

[PaulRainbow]

I have a B&G Vulcan 9 at the helm with a pair of B&G Triton 2 screens which have all worked flawlessly for the last four years. I noticed today when sailing the speed over ground figure on the Vulcan plotter would randomly jump up to 200 knots (and other very high figures) momentarily then back to six or seven knots which seemed more realistic. This would repeat intermittently over the journey with no time pattern. Also this morning one of the Triton 2 screens failed to power up when powering up the network. Has anyone had any similar issues?

I'd start by carefully checking all connections, intermittent poor connections to the master MFD could cause the SOG issue.

 

[PaulRainbow]

That hasn't been my experience from B&G UK and in particular Ben who I met for the first time at this year's boat show.

I've been somewhat of an unpaid volunteer beta tester for their Zeus S product and to be fair, they have acted on much of my feedback with updated firmware to fix issues I raised.

How about support for something a bit older ?

 

[wonkywinch]

How about support for something a bit older ?

The kit on our boat was 7 years old when we had problems integrating the newer Zeus S plotters. B&G, through Ben, did an exchange of our radar (4G to Halo), autopilot (AC42 to NAC3), Triton remote to Triton 2 and compass RC42 to Precision 9 all at 50% off or better. He arranged for the fitting via Hudson Marine at a very competitive price as well.

We had an almost complete update of our electronics at a very good price thanks to Ben. The radar was well out of warranty when it threw up the (common) wobbly these devices have (circle of death kaleidoscope patterns on the screen).

 

[PaulRainbow]

The kit on our boat was 7 years old when we had problems integrating the newer Zeus S plotters. B&G, through Ben, did an exchange of our radar (4G to Halo), autopilot (AC42 to NAC3), Triton remote to Triton 2 and compass RC42 to Precision 9 all at 50% off or better. He arranged for the fitting via Hudson Marine at a very competitive price as well.

We had an almost complete update of our electronics at a very good price thanks to Ben. The radar was well out of warranty when it threw up the (common) wobbly these devices have (circle of death kaleidoscope patterns on the screen).

I'm not sure that having to replace everything because their newer stuff doesn't integrate properly, at a cost of 50%, is to be celebrated, but it is better than what one would normally expect/get from Navico. I would guess that 50% of retail is about what they get from their main distributor, so the "upgrade" didn't actually cost them anything, but does get them some good customer feedback. Maybe they are finally getting the message that good customer support is very important.

 

[lustyd]

SOG doesn't come from the log, it's derived from the GPS.

I seem to remember it’s derived from as many GPS sources as you have unless you specify one. I had internal GPS on two plotters, plus external for the VHF/AIS and by default it would use all of them, causing momentary accelerations because they were a few metres apart.
Memory is fuzzy on this one but pretty sure I just set the GPS sources as desired on each device, as well as the source of SOG. Unfortunately specifying the source now means that if the main plotter is off the instruments complain about lack of GPS data. B&G don’t have a good way to fail over automatically that I can find. Their ethernet setup is similarly lacking in functionality.

 

[mrangry]

I seem to remember it’s derived from as many GPS sources as you have unless you specify one. I had internal GPS on two plotters, plus external for the VHF/AIS and by default it would use all of them, causing momentary accelerations because they were a few metres apart.
Memory is fuzzy on this one but pretty sure I just set the GPS sources as desired on each device, as well as the source of SOG. Unfortunately specifying the source now means that if the main plotter is off the instruments complain about lack of GPS data. B&G don’t have a good way to fail over automatically that I can find. Their ethernet setup is similarly lacking in functionality.

I did add a b&g v60b vhf/ais transponder last year so will have a look and check what source the system is using

 

[PaulRainbow]

I did add a b&g v60b vhf/ais transponder last year so will have a look and check what source the system is using

The V60B will be using it's own GPS. It may be making that GPS data available to the rest of the network.

 

[PaulRainbow]

I seem to remember it’s derived from as many GPS sources as you have unless you specify one. I had internal GPS on two plotters, plus external for the VHF/AIS and by default it would use all of them, causing momentary accelerations because they were a few metres apart.

That would be an odd way of doing things, for the reason you say. Garmin and Raymarine only use a single source, sometimes you have had to select the source, sometimes it's done automatically, depending on models. My system is all Garmin with 2 MFDs and the AIS all having GPS data but i've never had to do anything regarding GPS source and if any one device is on, with the others off, it all just works.

Memory is fuzzy on this one but pretty sure I just set the GPS sources as desired on each device, as well as the source of SOG. Unfortunately specifying the source now means that if the main plotter is off the instruments complain about lack of GPS data. B&G don’t have a good way to fail over automatically that I can find. Their ethernet setup is similarly lacking in functionality.

Raymarine still have the system where you have to designate a master and slave if you have two MFDs (even on the Axioms), the master supplies GPS data to the slave. If the master is off the slave complains about lack of GPS.

 

[lustyd]

Oh it’s definitely odd. The auto mode will select one but can change it on the fly from what I experienced. May well have changed that was a few years ago but I also had the v60b, which it turned out was an unreliable source of GPS despite the external antenna.