Excellent service from Simrad and ICS

[JerryHawkins]

Thought it was time for some praise where its due!

I've been having problems with my Simrad IS15 instruments, which has not as yet been resolved, but Simrad have been excellent. They have replaced my transceiver unit once and have now discovered that this unit has a general design problem which affects the depth side of things. They have kept me informed of progress and have promissed to send me a new transceiver when they have sorted the problem.

I've also had a problem with my ICS Nav6Plus navtex. It was suffering from interference (from above instruments!) causing all signals to be blocked when the instruments were on! ICS have exchanged it (about 7 months old) for a brand new unit and antenna which not only has better noise rejection circuitry but has the new firmware with the extra nav displays!

I would highly recommend both companies - its only when you have problems that the true value of good after-sales service is discovered.

Cheers, Jerry

 

[ccscott49]

Normally quality products, quality after sales! Especially when there core business is us!

 

[ParaHandy]

Delighted that you're getting help.

All these shenanigans does make me wonder whether integrated systems such as you describe are worth it? If one element goes AWOL will you lose the lot, with disastrous consequences?

Was thinking of replacing my lot with ST60 and use their data-bus but, on principle, beginning to wonder if it is wise.

 

[HaraldS]

following the threads here it seems to me that people start getting problems once they try to connect devices from different vendors. Part of the problem seems to be the old NMEA standard all the bastardized implementations.

It seems that the proprietary buses, like SeaTalk and Robnet cause a lot less grief.

I did mix my instruments, and while I didn't seem to have any electrical or noise problems, it took quite some troubleshooting to get it all work. For example I couldn't swing the flux compass of the AP, when there was NMEA traffic on the bridge because it overloaded the quite old and slow course computer and creating the deviation curve appearantly takes some cycles. So for swinging I needed to turn it off. Not obvious.

I have an ST60 system, with a total of nine instruments on the bus, that is including two control heads for the AP, and that in itself seems to work togther quite well. Connecting other makes like a Simrad CA40 (Radar Plotter and Sounder), took some more effort and getting the EPRIB reading the GPS position was a real pain. Here it turned out that it occasionally wakes up to look after a position signal, this is so that it's battery lasts for 12 years, if there are lots of NMEA sentences rolling out and it is not seeing it's GGA record fairly quickly, (it is the only one it can digest), then it goes to sleep again without position or with an old one. I finally had to feed it with a filtered output of just GGA to make it pick up the position reliably.

I can offer more such findings. But I would reiterate that your chances of (quick) success are significantly higher if you stick to one vendor.

As to the ST60 system, I think it is quite good. For my taste I had too many infant failures (three instruments in the first 2 weeks), but ever since they are working fine.

 

[rich]

simrad plotter repaird and back home in 5 days beat that

rich )