tiller pilot

[Guest]

iam thinking of buying a simrad tp10. i phoned up the maufacturer they told me it had to be mounted 3ft from anything magnetic or containg iron or steel because of the inbuilt compass.

The probelm is my gas locker is in the cockpit i.e less than 1ft away. iam only planing to use it for very short periods of time i.e. for chartwork etc. how badly do you think it will affect its performance. (will i sail in a big circle or anthing silly)

P.s. my boats a vallient 18

 

[vyv_cox]

My TP30 is also about 1 ft from the gas bottles. It has never been affected as far as I know - very reliable.

 

[Joe_Cole]

I had a similar problem a while ago, and different people had different advice for me. In my case the tiller pilot needed to be positioned 12inches above the outboard engine.

In the end I asked a chandlers if we could temporarily rig up a tiller pilot and test it out. Unfortunately, for me it wouldn't work. It was fine with the engine off, but as soon as it was started up the pilot went beserk. On that basis, odds are you will be OK, unless your gas bottles are spinning at 3000 RPM!

Joe

 

[LadyInBed]

I had no problems with an AH1000 mounted close to a gaz bottle.
One day I decided that it would be nice to mount a cockpit speaker in the gaz locker, it took me two hours to figure out why the AH would intermittantly take on a mind of its own and send me in circles.

 

[bedouin]

It should be okay.

All the tillar pilot has to do is maintain a constant compass heading, so anything that causes a constant compass error (on a constant bearing) will not cause a significant problem. They can still be impacted by variable factors like harness buckles, and I would be wary of magnets such as speakers or strong electric currents.

 

[Paulka]

I had, years ago, a steel boat, and one of the first ever AH.
Of course, there was steel all around the AH, I always landed spot on the buoy!

As said on earlier posts, as long as you don't move your gas bottles, it should be O.K.

 

[Guest]

Basically it shouldn't really matter. If it was to display the heading then you would find it in error .... but the tillerpilot doesn't work on absolute heading ... it works on detecting shift and bringing it back to original. When you set it working it doesn't care if its 1 deg or 100 deg in error ... as long as that error is reasonably constant.
OK when the boat swings, say if the boat turns 360 deg. then the error will change as it turns, until returning to original heading etc. BUt the amount is not a worry, as the tillerpilot is not so accurate in steering that you'd really notice as it tends to steer a 'wavy-line' albeit a very straight 'wavy-line' !!

I have a metal mainsheet horse, gas-bottle, tools, etc. etc within a metre of my TP1000 .... and it chugs along quite happily !

Oh by the way a tip that I learnt from another on this forum .... If you find that on one tack you don't have enough 'stroke' on the tiller pilot arm ..... have a second fitting that has the TP mounted further away so that the arm has longer stroke on the side it needs it.
My boat is a pain on a port tack and tends to luff up often and the TP is hard over trying to stop it. Having another mount a few inches further out has cured it !! On the stbd tack I put it back to the original and all is fine.

Nigel ...
Bilge Keelers get up further ! I only came - cos they said there was FREE Guinness !

 

[LadyInBed]

When you install the TP part of the setup will probably be to chug slowly in a large circle. This sorts out all the little devients that might be lurking around. Also remember this part of the setup if you stick a spare cylinder or chunk of iron in close proximity at a later date.