Cost effective (ie cheap) fluxgate compass

Conachair

Conachair

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I have a st2000 autopilot and a raymarine radar, I would like to fit an electronic compass to run the autopilot (steel boat and autopilot goes nuts when boat rolls) and get north up on the radar. Raymarine quoted 500 quid at boat show, more than I can afford unfortuanately. is there a cheaper option? Also spoke with nasa but he wasn´t sure if the refresh time on their unit (1 sec) would be enough for the autopilot. Spose if i had to choose just one i´d go for north up on the radar.
Any ideas?
Thanks
Paddy - Conachair
 
An ordinary fluxgate should do...

An ordinary Raymarine fluxgate compass transducer should be OK for your needs, and is about £60 new. The £500 you were quoted was probably for the Smart Heading System, which is a faster, more accurate system for better MARPA results.
 
Re: An ordinary fluxgate should do...

[ QUOTE ]
Can you just connect a raymarine fluxgate compass directly to a raymarine radar?

[/ QUOTE ]No. Generally you can connect a fluxgate to an autopilot and use SeaTalk link to radar. However, I don't think you can link a fluxgate directly to the ST2000. One solution might be to add an ST40 Compass display head, this will output data on SeaTalk which can be transferred to the ST2000 and to a Raymarine radar. Still much cheaper than £500.
 
I was researching this very question last year and after receiving a lot of differing information from various Raymarine dealers I concluded that an ST2000 cannot receive heading data from a fluxgate compass. If this is not correct I'd be very grateful if you could report your results on the forum.
 
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