ST Wind Instrument - part 2

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Sailfree

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Was thinking of waiting until Cherbourg Scuttlebutt cruise when I have some strong crew to winch me up mast so no progress todate except the instrument went through a phase of permenantly displaying 3 bars and indicator pointing to 12 o clock to now periodically displaying a wind speed then alternating with the 3 bars and indicator doin a loop de loop!! Also noticed that while ST60 is either not displaying or indicator spinning round the wind is still oftenbeing displayed on the Raymarine chartplotter data bar!! then that goes off occassionally.

This leads me to suspect its the ST60 wind display thats wrong and not the mast head unit. The connector at the bottom of the mast is always reading 8V on red andvarying voltages on other cables even when display is zero!!

Any further advice please?
 
Sailfree said:
Was thinking of waiting until Cherbourg Scuttlebutt cruise when I have some strong crew to winch me up mast so no progress todate except the instrument went through a phase of permenantly displaying 3 bars and indicator pointing to 12 o clock to now periodically displaying a wind speed then alternating with the 3 bars and indicator doin a loop de loop!! Also noticed that while ST60 is either not displaying or indicator spinning round the wind is still oftenbeing displayed on the Raymarine chartplotter data bar!! then that goes off occassionally.

This leads me to suspect its the ST60 wind display thats wrong and not the mast head unit. The connector at the bottom of the mast is always reading 8V on red andvarying voltages on other cables even when display is zero!!

Any further advice please?
Click to expand...

Not sure I understand the mystery following the earlier advice on voltages in your previous post. If you have the correct voltages on all the wires 8 on red, 2 to 6 on blue and green and 0 to 5 on yellow then the transducer is passing the Ray Marine test. So it's either cabling between your test point and the instrument head or your instrument head. I assume you have checked the connections to the Instrument Head. So it's Instrument Head back to Ray Marine I guess.

By the way, my wind speed failed the day before yesterday. I am really fed up with Ray Marine's stuff. I have never had two full consecutive seasons of full functionality in 12 years of ownership
 
tillergirl said:
Not sure I understand the mystery following the earlier advice on voltages in your previous post. If you have the correct voltages on all the wires 8 on red, 2 to 6 on blue and green and 0 to 5 on yellow then the transducer is passing the Ray Marine test. So it's either cabling between your test point and the instrument head or your instrument head. I assume you have checked the connections to the Instrument Head. So it's Instrument Head back to Ray Marine I guess.

By the way, my wind speed failed the day before yesterday. I am really fed up with Ray Marine's stuff. I have never had two full consecutive seasons of full functionality in 12 years of ownership
Click to expand...

my Raymarine stuff I installed 14 trouble free years ago
 
Maybe right but I have certainly learnt that the masthead transducer is not water tight when the mast is horizontal. That was the first problem to occur "Oh no sir, it's not intended to be laid horizontal". That means, of course I have to reef when it is raining :p

I fear we are drifting from the poor OP's dilemma but having a nice collection of reports from the Raymarine Service Department, I fear his problem is the instrument head - unless he is lucky to find a poor connection at the bottom of the mast. That's where I am hoping to find my problem but history tells me I am most likely to be disappointed..... But given my other recent troubles perhaps I'll be lucky with this one.
 
When I bought Jeddo it had a broken wind vane. On the delivery trip from Falmouth to Kent we intermitantly had wind speed on the ST50 display, then it stopped completely. I initially thought the problem was on the deck plug and socket as there was some corrosion and wobling the plug around on the trip back from Cornwall seemed to affect the wind speed display. A change of plug made no difference. I moved my attention to the mast head unit. I replaced the broken vane and the direction sensors as I hadn't seen any movement on the display. Still no difference. The following winter I replaced the VHF aerial cable due to it being scuffed where it exited the mast by the Genoa sheets. In doing so I found a scuffed section of the wind transducer cable tucked back in the mast. The conductors looked ok and seemed to test out OK. I then found what looked like a screen wire that was broken. A quick bodge of soldering a piece of wire across the break and both speed and direction were working. The screen wire is the earth return for the head unit. There was enough slack in the mast to allow me to cut out the damaged section and feed the cable through a deck gland and join the cable above the head lining in the dry. It now works fine.
 
The mast head transducer 'plugs' into a little black box via a multi-pinned DIN type plug on the end of the transducer arm. Every winter when I drop my mast, I unscrew the retaining nut on the transducer and remove it from the black box. A rubber cover is provided to cover the black box terminal. The little black box is screwed to the mast via two self tappers and is integral with the cable. On the other end - well see my article in the magazine to which I referred in the earlier post. You do need to check the connections on the back of the instrument head, one or more might simply be loose.
 
oh well, another manufacturer off the list to replace my ageing autonnic wind instruments. had tacktick still made the T033 entry sysem that would have been the choice, but now I'm tempted to use the NASA unit as whatever manufacturer is mentioned someone seems to have a horror story and at least the NASA unit is cheap............
 
I had a very similar problem at the end of last season. I found Raymarine tech support to be very helpful. My issue was that the connectors at the back'm of the instrument head had got wet and corroded. Took the instruments off and dried them out over winter. Also managed to find a bit of slack in the cable so cut the old spade connectors off and replaced them. It has worked perfectly all this year.
 
We have had a non-functional ST50 wind indicator for several years. I should have course done something about it, but the more time goes by the less I seem to need it. No am I inspired to replace with the same, just because it is Seatalk, when it seems to have fundamental design flaws. Either that or it's part of sods law that the moving parts are the most likely to breakdown first.

Just to get a good bit of thread drift going, I wish I could find the link to an ultrasonic wind indicator I spotted a while back. I've a feeling it was made by part of Furino in France, but I might be wrong.
 
Our new to us Benny Oceanis 36CC came with ST30 instruments originally installed by the Us importer for the previous and original owner (wind/depth/ speed) that all failed on the 500ml delivery trip to us as did the SL71 pathfinder radar. We are in the process of having all new NMEA 2000 Garmin kit installed...
 
Probably teaching people to suck eggs but...

My st60+ wind started displaying erroneous data. I did a factory reset... all good now.
 
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