pugwash60
Member
I've been trying to fit a Garmin AIS 600 to my boat, to interface with a Garmin 750 chartplotter, and it's driving me mad. I've programmed the MMSI on my computer, and when connected on the boat it appears to be working, ie, the led indicators show that all is well, and I get rf interference every few seconds as it appears to be receiving messages and or sending them. The GPS aerial is working fine, as I can change it over with another Garmin GPS aerial and the appropriate machine works fine on either.
However I cannot get any indication on the chartplotter of any other AIS contacts and neither the coastguard nor the local ferry can see me, and, obviously, I'm not appearing on web based AIS.
I'm pretty sure I've connected the correct wires for nmea 0183 or whatever the number is, which happen to be gray and pink on the ais out put and brown and violet on the charplotter input. I've tried both slow and fast baud rates on transmission and reception on the chartplotter. I've also tried connecting the NMEA 2000 but still with no results.
I wondered whether my VHF aerial might be the problem so sailed to my local chandler and bought and fitted a new VHF Aerial, which initially showed the same symptoms but then when I soldered the connection when I got home rather than just having the small wires swimming around in the pl 259, I got an error warning on the AIS leds, and if I put it back on the old VHF aerial this disappeared, so it's possible I've melted some of the insulation (I speeded up the heating process on the pl 259 with a blow torch which may not have been a good idea!).
I am used to ship based AIS so was also surprised not to see a menu for destination, pob, eta, draft etc, but assume that these are not included on 'B' transmitters.
Does any body have any ideas ? My thoughts are that it is either using an incorrect frequency so no body is seeing me and I'm not seeing anybody else, or there is a problem with it which the internal diagnostics are not seeing. Either way it sounds like a return to sender problem.
Thanks.
However I cannot get any indication on the chartplotter of any other AIS contacts and neither the coastguard nor the local ferry can see me, and, obviously, I'm not appearing on web based AIS.
I'm pretty sure I've connected the correct wires for nmea 0183 or whatever the number is, which happen to be gray and pink on the ais out put and brown and violet on the charplotter input. I've tried both slow and fast baud rates on transmission and reception on the chartplotter. I've also tried connecting the NMEA 2000 but still with no results.
I wondered whether my VHF aerial might be the problem so sailed to my local chandler and bought and fitted a new VHF Aerial, which initially showed the same symptoms but then when I soldered the connection when I got home rather than just having the small wires swimming around in the pl 259, I got an error warning on the AIS leds, and if I put it back on the old VHF aerial this disappeared, so it's possible I've melted some of the insulation (I speeded up the heating process on the pl 259 with a blow torch which may not have been a good idea!).
I am used to ship based AIS so was also surprised not to see a menu for destination, pob, eta, draft etc, but assume that these are not included on 'B' transmitters.
Does any body have any ideas ? My thoughts are that it is either using an incorrect frequency so no body is seeing me and I'm not seeing anybody else, or there is a problem with it which the internal diagnostics are not seeing. Either way it sounds like a return to sender problem.
Thanks.