I would say it is impractable.
Chap has an auto-pilot here in Sth Aust on a 38footer and believe me it is
the worst boat in the fleet. The boat has the nickname of "drunkboat".
Firstly, those jets are OK for 18 footers going like a bat-out-of-hell up a
fast flowing river & doing spin-outs in their own length like in NZ tourist
fjiords.
At 18 to 25 knots they just wander all over the place. Maybe if you had a
full length keel or something it might help.
"drunkboat" has nearly been spun that many times in a big following sea that
most won't go out with him if there are more than a metre seas running. Like
I said, on a 45MPH boat on a fresh water lake.......... no worries.
BruceM


"Larry" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 28 Nov 2003 18:38:41 -0500, Harry Krause wrote:

Interesting. Well, autopilots work on small boats, but the small boats
I've been on that have been so equipped tend to wander a bit back and
forth, yaw, as it were. Bigger boats tend to do that, too, but the
motion seems less noticeable.

That's interesting. I've never seen a small boat with an autopilot, so I
have no basis to judge. I wonder if they were controlled by flux gate
compasses or NEMA streams from a GPS? I can see where that might well be
a
problem. The larger the craft, the greater the mass, so it makes sense
that they would tend to track better.

I don't know a soul who has a jetboat with an autopilot. Hinckley builds
some large, fancy boats and I presume they are so equipped. You might
want to contact Hinckley and what non-nominal behavior might be part and
parcel of equipping a small jet drive boat with an autopilot.

Either do I, thus the post here! Furthermore, this may be entirely
impractical. If it is, I'll drop it.

Hinckley makes gorgeous boats! That's a name from the past, I'm glad to
see they're still around. I'll take a look - thank you.
--

Larry
email is rapp at lmr dot com