Raymarine ST2000+

[Porthandbuoy]

All season I have had a niggle with my autohelm. Most of the time it works fine and it has plenty of 'grunt' to keep my rather heavy Nic 26 on track.
However, every now and again the fluxgate compass throws a wobbler and the ram repeatedly goes fully extended to fully retracted. When this happens, I put the autohelm into standby and can see the heading displayed is nowhere near the bulkhead compass reading. The error (deviation?) is different every time.

Fed up steaming in circles at <2kts I now re-calibrate the compass by rotating the unit by hand. It's only a 5 minute job, but surely I shouldn't have to do this on a regular basis?

Does anyone have any idea why the compass keeps losing its deviation table? Because that's what appears to be happening.

 

[Topcat47]

Interestingly I have experienced a problem on my original Autohelm ST2000. In my case the fluxgate compass had dropped out of it's gimbal. In this case though the ram just extended to it's fullest extent. I'm not sure what would cause it to oscillate as you describe. I, too have a Nic' 26. Great little boat! My Autohelm is almost as old as the boat and bears little resemblance to the current Raymarine one.

Of course, if you're near Helensburgh, Faslane has a plethora of large chunks of steel to mess with your compass. (I do know there are two Garelochs in Scotland.)

 

[Porthandbuoy]

Of course, if you're near Helensburgh, Faslane has a plethora of large chunks of steel to mess with your compass. (I do know there are two Garelochs in Scotland.)

Don't think I can blame Faslane. Although my mooring is very close to the base I'm pretty certain the large chunks of steel you might be referring to are degaussed before going out to play.

 

[macd]

Porthandbuoy: I've had exactly that behaviour on two different ST2000+ units. In both cases the cause was a piece of broken O-ring becoming detached and lodging in the compass gimbal. I know from other threads that several forumites have experienced the same issue on ST1000+ and 2000+s. However, there are certainly other possible causes. A very temporary fix might be to turn the unit upside down whilst giving it a good shaking.

You'd need to split the unit to find out. Although your paperwork will state that this invalidates the warranty, I've subsequently had the warranty honoured on one unit, having claimed force majeure.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

Until I installed a remote compass, mine gave trouble because of the proximity of the VHF command mike, which caused random compass deviations because of the largish magnets in the speaker! The deviation couldn't be corrected, as of course the position of the command mike changed, changing the magnetic field. That wasn't the only reason I installed a remote compass - all my kit is Raymarine, and the compass in the tiller pilot was (of course)sending out the wrong heading when not connected to the tiller, putting other indications (course vectors on the chart plotter, True Wind etc.) off as well. However, I'd suggest that it may be damp inside - the ST2000 is notoriously prone to getting damp inside, and this ended the life of the last one I had. Taking it ashore and keeping it in the airing cupboard for a few weeks will sort that out. I've made a canvas cover for the replacement to hopefully make it a bit more damp proof. In the case of mine, the mechanical parts were worn out as well; if it had only been damp, it might have been repairable.

 

[Porthandbuoy]

Porthandbuoy: I've had exactly that behaviour on two different ST2000+ units. In both cases the cause was a piece of broken O-ring becoming detached and lodging in the compass gimbal. I know from other threads that several forumites have experienced the same issue on ST1000+ and 2000+s. However, there are certainly other possible causes. A very temporary fix might be to turn the unit upside down whilst giving it a good shaking.

You'd need to split the unit to find out. Although your paperwork will state that this invalidates the warranty, I've subsequently had the warranty honoured on one unit, having claimed force majeure.

My ST2000+ was repaired under warranty when the gears broke, so I've no qualms about splitting the unit and checking it like you suggest. Perhaps Raymarine failed to remove all the broken bits.

 

[Spyro]

Does it happen when you have a mobile phone near it? Mine goes crazy when I do. I've also had another problem with the ST2000 causing intermittent interference on the vhf but only on channel 16. Anyone had that?

 

[Channel Sailor]

I had a strange issue with my ST2000+ a few weeks ago. While motoring in flat calm along the Eastern Solent passing 0.7NM from an anchored USA Aircraft Carrier, my ST2000 regularly sounded a bleep to say it could not control the course. Happened about three times over 20 mins. Reasons could be: it was sensitive overvoltage from the batteries because the yacht engine had been running for quite a while, something gone wrong in side the tiller pilot or something from the Carrier. The tiller pilot has not done the same thing since so I suspect it was radar energy either from the carrier or vessels/aircraft protecting it. I vaguely recall discovering mobile phones affect the tiller pilot. so I do not keep my phone in my pocket near the tiller pilot.

5 years ago my first ST2000+ tiller pilot was replaced in its first season under warranty due to water ingress, though I suspect it could have been dud when I bought it new because the box had been tampered with. The replacement has been OK since, but I do have a splash proof jacket over it. The jacket was made by me, sewn by hand, made of a patio chair waterproof cover material with a see through plastic window stitched into it for the buttons and display area.


It seems OK, quite quick compared to 1000 series or similar offering from other manufacturer. I do miss the feature to manually set the sea state and it stays that way. On the ST2000+ it has auto seastate or seastate control off. I seems to recall the Navico/Simrad (or what ever the other manufacturer is) you can manually control the seastate. But the TP2000 has a screen with which you can see a few useful things on.