QME wind vane

[CAPTAIN FANTASTIC]

Have you heard of these old wind vanes? There is one on the e-bay which looks incomplete to me as it does not have a spade/rudder. Perhaps it operates by the airvane only.

 

[Wansworth]

Its an air vane..had one years ago a blt of a disappointment

 

[Tranona]

Leave it where it is. Had one on my boat when I bought it 30 odd years ago - never managed to get it to work. Sold it for £25 (less commission) at YotGrot in Lymington (now a block of flats and the resident ducks have gone).

 

[jwilson]

Leave it where it is. Had one on my boat when I bought it 30 odd years ago - never managed to get it to work. Sold it for £25 (less commission) at YotGrot in Lymington (now a block of flats and the resident ducks have gone).

QME = Quantock Marine Enterprises

Used one, and built a vane gear on a similar operating principle myself. As it uses a horizontally-hinged air-vane only it is not particularly powerful, and will only really steer properly if the boat itself is well trimmed to reduce tiller loads. Overall not a very successful item, though better than no vane gear at all if singlehanding. Not too bad to windward or on a close reach, but offwind not really enough power.

 

[Tranona]

Yes, that was the problem, could not handle the loads of the old barn door rudder. Might have been better with the better balanced rudder I now have. Anyway bought a mini Seacourse instead (shows how long ago it was) and then an Autohelm - much more suited to my style of sailing.

 

[Blueboatman]

If you had a transom hung rudder, the trick was to hang a separate, partially balanced trim tab off of it and hook that up to the QME with reversed lines. Then the demand loads on the vane were very light indeed.

But no one would diy like that today I suspect.

 

[Ross D]

I am building a DIY windvane at the moment, the general consensus I got when discussing air only vanes is that they just about cope up wind but anything else the relative wind was simply not enough. Hence I am building a transom hung rudder with a trim tab system, that way the water flow provides the rudders turning force, not the wind speed as with a QME.