Raymarine Autopilot with/without rudder indicator

[piratos]

Bad Luck: shortly after I took over the boat the autopilot broke, so local company gave an offer for a new Raymarine autopilot and installed it. Sofar so good, but only after some time they managed to adjust it to actually steer. The new Autopilot is without rudder reference sensor, and Raymarine claim it works without, on the other hand they do offer a sensor (?).

Autopilots I had in the past were steering a lot better, so question is: does anybody know whether the rudder sensor actually improve the steering ???

 

[DrSpock]

It does improve it and the ACU-200 and above come with it as standard so assume you have an ACU-100? Raymarine claim the EV-1 can calculate a virtual rudder using accelerometers but often doesn't work well with slower displacement vessels.

You can pick a used one up for around £100 and personally even just having a rudder indicator on the MFD is useful.