ST50 wind instruments not working

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ifoxwell

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Hi all.
So they were, but the mast came down over the winter and now that its gone back up they are not, or at least not properly
They give a reading for both speed and direction, its just that it appears that the readings given have nothing to do with what's actually happening at the top of the mast.
I've checked the connections at the mast base and they seem good, any one any idea on what can cause this phenomenon
Thanks
Ian
 
It sounds like a poor connection or malfunction at the top of the mast. However, if you check the voltages across the different connections at the bottom of the mast you can easily determine whether the problem lies at the top. Full details of what voltage you should see across each connection are available on the Raymarine website or in previous threads on this forum.

Raymarine masthead wind instrument testing. Any thoughts?

Richard
 
Excellent, thanks for the link Richard. Do you or any one else know what the differences are between the ST50 and ST60 heads, electrically speaking?
 
I had several years of trouble with an ST50. One useful stage of the diagnostic process was to borrow a "picoscope" and attach to a laptop to make an oscilloscope, and then get a friend to observe what signals came off the wires at the base of the mast (I had an accessible set of connections in the saloon roof) as I motored round in circles. FYI - sinusoidal curves 90 degrees out of phase with each other on the blue and green direction lines, and the yellow (speed) line at +7V with spikes down to zero, the intervals between the spikes reducing with increasing wind speed.

It's important to check the signals coming back with the positive and earth lines connected, but the signal lines disconnected from the display unit, as a fault in the display unit's electronics (which is what I eventually found to be the case) can tie down the voltages on the sine, cos or speed lines, making you think the fault is up top when it's not.

Raymarine, of course, just told me "It's knackered, you'll have to buy a new one. " (and charged me £40 to tell me that). In the end a friend, who does high-end electronics stuff for RAL, diagnosed the fault and fixed the display unit for me, for a donation of a good bottle of malt whisky. One of the input filter chips was bust and needed replacing. I have the full circuit diagram , should you need it and if you have someone to hand suitably talented!
 
I assume you stored your mast horizontally. I always did that. And I found my wind transducer failed. I was told I had water in the transducere because I had stored the transducer horizontally over winter and it was not waterproof while laid horizontal. I had to buy a new transducer and thereafter I removed the transducer each winter while the mast was stored.

Not impressed by Raymarine.
 
Thanks for all the help guys, thats exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for, I'll report back in due course with the findings
 
Aside from the testing process linked to above, don't these ST50 wind units need a linearization to be done once installed..

Basically, power on, then motor around in two complete circles.

The manual describes this here...

Screenshot_20210406-183057_Drive.jpg
 
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