Quandary
Well-Known Member
When the mast went in this spring I went up and fitted the antenna and wind transducer, it did not show wind speed straight away, I took it off and put it back on and spun it with my hand it then seemed to work, at the time I examined the pins that connect the transducer and they appeared to be straight. Since then the wind display has shown direction, but if set to 'apparent, shows the wind speed as 0.0; if I switch back to 'true' it shows wind speed numbers the same as the boat speed. This fault is not continuous, from time to time it shows correctly, this often, but not always, seems to be when the wind is stronger. Perhaps the vibration restores the dodgy contact?
Being hopeless with electronics but an optimist I tend to believe that there may just be a dodgy contact between the removable transducer arm and the mast fitting but I suppose the fault could be anywhere. The disconnection point at the foot of the keel steeped mast is just in a tiny choc block type fitting which is located in the hollow leg of the saloon table, so should be dry, I have tugged the flimsy wires here gently and they all seem tight.
Before the mast is unstepped I usually go up to remove the fittings vulnerable to the crane, so I will try wiggling the transducer arm and flicking the rotater to see if I can get a reading on the dial but I suspect that there may be something more scientific that might be done. A replacement transducer is around £350 and these days a standard Raymarine instrument test and repair is not much less, so I would hope that it might be possible to look for a cheaper solution first.
Is there anything I can do to test this before the mast comes down? once it is down is there any way to test for the location of the fault? I am reluctant to return to Raymarine except as a last resort, it took them two goes to repair the autopilot which failed a month or two after the warranty ran out, though to be fair, because the unsuccessful repair was warranted for a year, I only had to pay once but it was still expensive.
Being hopeless with electronics but an optimist I tend to believe that there may just be a dodgy contact between the removable transducer arm and the mast fitting but I suppose the fault could be anywhere. The disconnection point at the foot of the keel steeped mast is just in a tiny choc block type fitting which is located in the hollow leg of the saloon table, so should be dry, I have tugged the flimsy wires here gently and they all seem tight.
Before the mast is unstepped I usually go up to remove the fittings vulnerable to the crane, so I will try wiggling the transducer arm and flicking the rotater to see if I can get a reading on the dial but I suspect that there may be something more scientific that might be done. A replacement transducer is around £350 and these days a standard Raymarine instrument test and repair is not much less, so I would hope that it might be possible to look for a cheaper solution first.
Is there anything I can do to test this before the mast comes down? once it is down is there any way to test for the location of the fault? I am reluctant to return to Raymarine except as a last resort, it took them two goes to repair the autopilot which failed a month or two after the warranty ran out, though to be fair, because the unsuccessful repair was warranted for a year, I only had to pay once but it was still expensive.
