Wind Vane Steering for a Tenner?

[Rich_F]

What do people think of the article in March PBO about making your own windvane steering for a tenner, out of an old bike? Anyone tempted to give it a whirl?

By the time you've hired welding kit and sourced other bits, it'll cost a bit more, but probably well under 100 for a piece of kit that looks reasonably solid, and should work pretty well.

Makes you wonder why all the commercial offerings are priced at over 1000 pounds. The cheaper ones don't strike me as being much more substantial than this DIY alternative.

Just had a brainwave, though! If one reversed the direction in which the servo tiller moved, would it not be possible to simply lash the arm carrying the servo tiller directly to the boat's tiller, removing the need for both the pulley system, and the bearing mounted on the top of the transom. This would remove the need for any permanent mountings on the transom; the vane assembly shouldn't have much load on it, so can be simply attached to the pushpit, over the rudder stock. Or am I missing something?

Intrigued,

Rich

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[mike_k]

This site :-

<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.mindspring.com/~waltmur/Self-Steering/>http://www.mindspring.com/~waltmur/Self-Steering/</A>

also has some self-build designs.

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[alex_rogers]

I haven't seen the article but what you are describing sounds like the design used by Auto Steer

http://www.autosteer.com/html/products.html

The very light wind vane can be mounted pretty much anywhere i.e. on the push pit, whilst everything else is mounted onto the rudder stock.

My boat has a Schwing servo-pendulum system and the entire thing is mounted off the pushpit. This is nice as you can take it off without leaving any holes!

I think sometimes the forces generated by wind vanes are a little over-estimated, especially when you look at the size of some of the Aries components compared to newer designs. The Schwing is supposed to generate up to 70Kg force on the tiller lines and I can't see anywhere in the mounting where the leverage is likely to be much greater than this. My pushpit is bolted through the deck in six places and I think the aluminimum casting of the Schwing would fail first.

Alex


<hr width=100% size=1>Alex Rogers
<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.YachtsAtSea.com> www.YachtsAtSea.com </A>

 

[Rich_F]

The autosteer uses a trim tab on the main rudder, so can only be used with a transom hung rudder.

My idea was, in effect, to have a trim tab mounted to an arm fastened to the top of the tiller, acting using the same principles as the autosteer, but also working with non-transom hung rudders. I haven't yet seen any commercial offerings that take this approach.

Rich

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