Raymarine wind instrument ST60 gives wrong direction by 90 degrees

[Anonymous]

I have had a persistent fault for some time; my Raymarine instruments all show my wind to be way off the correct direction. So much so, that I have not made any serious attempt to quantify it until I changed the head the other day. I changed the whole Wind Vane assembly by a brand new unused replacement at the masthead and the problem is the same. Presently, on a fixed heading in my berth, I am showing a wind direction about 90 degrees anticlockwise from the correct direction.

The system is a Raymarine Wind Vane head wired into an ST60 Wind and Close Hauled instrument. The vane wiring goes nowhere else and the only other things connected to that ST60 are two SeaTalk connectors that connect daisy-chain to a Raymarine Speed, Depth, two autopilot heads, course computer, radar and one ST60 Multi. There is no evidence of a bad connection - I have removed the spade terminals and replaced them and the signals are constant, not showing any sign of a bad connection.

I did have someone looking at the wiring some time ago around the ST60 for something unrelated and I think that I remember the man saying something about the Raymarine wiring but I didn't pay attention at the time. I can't say for sure whether the problem occurred after that as I go for long periods without bothering too much about the wind angle display as I tend to look at the Windex.

This error of 90; could it be a phase quadrature in the windings due to two of the vane wires being crossed over? The colours are all correct (i.e. colour to colour) but suppose this had been incorrectly wired in the original installation such that the correct wiring was, say, blue to yellow and yellow to blue and this fellow spots the 'error' while he is working in there and kindly puts it right?

I really don't know - I cannot be sure enough about the timing of the problem but not only is the indicator of the ST60 90 degrees wrong, it is sending the wrong direction along the SeaTalk bus to the other ST60 Multi and, presumably, the autopilot heads.

The windspeed looks fine.

Many thanks.

 

[BruceDanforth]

I think you have to calibrate it. There should be instructions to get into calibrate mode in the manual if you have it.

 

[AIDY]

calabration involves turning the boat through 2 circles then heading off into the wind. from memory if you change the mast head unit and keep an old head unit you do need to change some calibration factors... all will be revealed in the instruction manual

 

[Anonymous]

Yes, I knew that you need to calibrate it to remove the minor errors but 90 degrees, and exactly the same 90 degrees that had been present with the old head?

Not impossible, I suppose, if we are saying that there is no intrinsic sychronisation, but I would be surprised?

 

[billskip]

I may be wrong but i think to calibrate you switch off power hold in (one or two) buttons on the display and switch on power then you can set by point boat into wind, or calibrate display pointer into known wind direction....

If all fails turn mast thro 90deg using big mole grips /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

 

[tome]

The calibration constants are stored in the wind instrument and unless you recalibrate it will apply the same stored offsets

So if someones fiddled with your cal setting resulting in a 90 deg error, it will faithfully reproduce the error even if you fit a new vane - until you re-calibrate

If the wind speed is looking good this is almost certainly your problem

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks, I'll do no more until I can get out to calibrate it, then.

 

[jerryat]

Hi Lemain,

I do think the previous posters are correct re calibration. I have virtually the same set-up as you, and when first fitted the wind read-out showed just under 70 degs error.

I confess here that I found understanding the calibration instructions damned difficult initially, but once I got there, I was able to entirely correct the problem.

I really hope it'll be the same fo you. Good luck. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[AIDY]

After putting a new mast head unit on about three weeks ago. ours was out about 150 degrees i was not expecting this either. you also need to find out what software version you are running. and change the calibration factor to suit. it's all in the manual.... took me a few hours to get my head round it all.

 

[Oldhand]

No you have to have power on, press and hold the 2 left buttons together until the wind speed display shows CAL. Press the left hand button briefly and the wind speed display changes to zero. Then either press and hold the right hand button or the next to right hand button depending on which way you want the calibration to go, starboard or port. The numbers on the windspeed display will count up. Release the button being pressed when the desired calibration offset is achieved. in this case 90 degrees. Fine adjustments can be made by individaul presses ot the two right buttons as required. When the correct offset is achieved, again press the 2 left buttons together until wind speed is shown in the wind speed display, thus exiting calibration mode and storing the calibration.

 

[Anonymous]

I followed your instructions to the letter and within 30 seconds we are reading the right direction /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Thanks to all of you who have identified this as a calibration problem.

By the way, I did not just change the head because of the incorrect reading; the plastic had degraded, the vane is about to break as are one of the cups. I need to service this one as I always like to keep a serviced replacement available.

Thanks to you all, you have helped enormously. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[[2574]]

Lemain,

I've fitted an ST60 wind and have the same problem. I've tried to calibrate - going around in circles until I was dizzy! It won't calibrate, Raymarine advise that there might be a conflict with the other ST50's. I plan to disconnect the ST50's and try again.

I've also aligned the pointer as discussed above so, in analogue terms, the pointer is correct. However, as you mention, it still feeds the incorrect wind heading on to the Seatalk bus so it's a "fudge".

I'm still struggling with it.

rob

 

[Anonymous]

Rob,

I followed the penultimate poster's instructions to the letter without going round in circles. We are in a marina and it isn't possible to leave to go and calibrate this, and I want it to be at least approximately right first. All I did was to estimate by eye the difference between the relative wind at the vane, and the indication on the ST60 wind instrument, then I adjusted it. The other ST60 (the multi) down below now indicates the correct (adjusted) wind direction and it is connected only by the SeaTalk bus, so the ST60 Wind is putting the correct information in the bus.

Others are better qualified than I to speculate, but I find it strange if your ST60 wind display is not the same data as it puts out on the SeaTalk bus. My suggestion is to get it about right in harbour before doing the full calibration at sea but this seems like a well-informed group and no doubt you will get an answer!

Good luck, David

 

[tome]

You can only calibrate the head to which the wind vane is connected, so if it's connected to a ST50 head you need to do the calibration on this. Other wind instruments will take the info via Seatalk

 

[[2574]]

Tome,

Thanks. Yes I've been trying to calibrate the ST60 which is attached to the wind vane. For some reason I get a constant alarm on an ST50 multi - it displays wind speed (I think, might be direction) and will not display the other data screens whilst the alarm is sounding.

rob

 

[jimg]

It might be worth checking what NMEA sentences the ST60 generates and which are required by the ST50. There are alternatives for each data item and I beleive Raymarine may not always use the same one with later instruments.

 

[[2574]]

Thanks for that. I must admit I thought that between Raymarine instruments it was pure Seatalk and that NMEA wasn't involved - is that wrong?

rob

 

[tome]

Sorry to say that's a total red herring. They use seatalk to communicate, not nmea

 

[tome]

Never connected ST50 and ST60 together, though no reason why they shouldn't work in theory. I know that the seatalk standard has evolved over the years and I've seen some bizarre results from mixing generations of equipment. For example, the early versions of the NMEA/Seatalk bridge introduced an error of 32,768 miles in the log reading!

If you want to investigate Seatalk further, here's a link. One thing to try first is connect the power (red) lead of the final instrument in the chain back to the instrument supply in case it's a simple power problem along the chain

 

[Anonymous]

Sadly that hasn't solved the problem. Last night the wind went round from W to NE but the wind direction on both the ST60 wind (into which the vane is wired) and the ST60 Multi below (which gets its data via SeaTalk) is showing NNW not NE and the needle looks jittery, not smooth. The data agree on both instruments, but that does not tie up with the actual vane position. I can't move the vane other than by climbing the mast, which is inconvenient.

Any ideas? Many thanks.