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Tapio Sokura
 
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Default Autohelm 5000 Boat going in circles

Bruce in Alaska wrote:
Did it ever work for you, correctly? If not, then first thing I would
check is to see, if the controller to actuator wiring is hooked up
backwards. Ie controller says turn right and actuater is turning left.
This happens alot more often than one would think, with consumer
installations.


This reminds me of a problem with an st2000+ tiller pilot we were just
installing in an Etap 26. The boat is equipped with EVS (Etap Vertical
Steering), so the "tiller" is mounted vertically, see
http://www.wslc.co.jp/yacht/img/etap/EVS_34s.jpg . When sitting on the
small middle bench at the back, you steer like you would steer with a
wheel, turning the tiller to starboard if you want the boat to turn to
starboard.

When a tiller pilot is attached to an EVS system, the pilot of course
steers backwards. If you reverse the direction of mounting in the tiller
with a certain button combination, you get the correct movement, but the
autopilot's internal compass now reads 180 degrees off. Is there a way
to fix this? I didn't find anything useful in the manual about this
situation. Could the fix be a reversing of some actuator wiring inside
the pilot, similar to what is described above? Or could it work if we
entered a declination of 180 + the real declination in the autopilot..?

An additional external fluxgate compass would probably fix this, but it
naturally costs money.

Tapio