"Paul" wrote in
:

Issues:
- Obsolete, no feature enhancements in the future (will never support
AIS) - Uses CMAP chart chips, which are good, but the new Raymarine
gear uses Navionics charts instead

All part of the marketing. The Garmin GPSMAP 185 sitting next to it
can't even get a new chart any more. We're forced to replace all
electronics every 3-5 years, no matter what it costs. It's a travesty.

- Sharing waypoints between the networked units, or an attached PC, is
difficult (for me) to make work well

Make sure the waypoint statements are turned on in the RLs. I had some
troubles because many of the damned statements were defaulted OFF from
the factory. There's a menu choice buried in there that lists them all.

- Doesn't recognize the NMEA output from my B&G wind instruments (it
expects a different NMEA wind message). My other NMEA inputs are
recognized.


Which B&G do you have. Lionheart came with B&G "Network" instruments,
which are just a daisy-chained NMEA0183 system, so we stuck with the
obsolete equipment, adding Network Pilot, Network Depth, Network Data
(repeater at the nav station) to what was there. Of course, now, none of
the new B&G instruments are NMEA compatible with new proprietary
crapware. With Network instruments, you pick out the red data wire from
any cable in the loop and all the statements from all the Network
instruments plugged into the loop are all right at your disposal.

We find that the compass sensor for B&G Network Pilot is a MUCH better
NMEA compass than either the Raymarine compass sensor or the Smart
Heading Sensor. It just shows as more stable, even though it's mounted
about 3' from the Raymarine compass sensor. Network Pilot running off
Network Wind offshore makes a dandy wind vane steering device for night
runs in the rain. We build what looks like a miniature trailer hitch of
a bellcrank on the rudder post in the aft cabin under the bunk to hook
Pilot's electrohydraulic actuator to. If the rudder doesn't fall out,
we'll have steering..(c; The Pilot's learning algorithms make beautiful
turns after it stores the boat's characteristics for a while.

We don't navigate from the Raymarine's old charts. We use The Cap'n on a
Dell Latitude laptop, which now has an SR-162 AIS receiver plugged into a
Radio Shack RS-232C to USB adapter cable to feed it AIS data. It drives
the B&G Pilot through a Noland multiplexer. Backup is the boards I
salvaged from a portable Yeoman plotting board my captain left in his
pickup truck in the sun in Atlanta. All the foam glue turned to jelly
and he was about to toss it in the trash. I took the boards out and
mounted them with industrial double-sided tape to the bottom of the
Amel's mahogany chart table lift top. Yeoman's signal to its puck works
fantastic through 1/2" of mahogany and the whole Maptech chart books just
folded over to put the chart we want on top. A velum sheet lets us plot
by hand in case of massive electronic failure using the Yeoman's puck
every hour over the chart book. The Yeoman can feed waypoints to The
Cap'n and Pilot as well as anything.

My captain loves all the toys....(c; He hands me new boxes and says,
"Can you make this work on our system?"....usually as he's headed out the
hatch to get out of the way. Gotta love him....(c;


Larry