Raymarine Autopilot Troubleshooting Tips?
Question:
I have a question for you about Raymarine's autopilot automated driving. Looks like it's ours. Sometimes it tracks well and other times we press "auto" and get either a "no data" message or the wheel suddenly spins half a turn in either direction, prompting us to veer off course and rush to cancel the autopilot. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to when to do it - it's so unpredictable that we never use it. We took care to keep lever handles and other metal objects out of the way of the flow gate compass. Any suggestions?
Answer:
If you've already set up your course and you're just following a heading on the pilot, it's weird for it to jump when you engage the pilot. Even if your heading isn't calibrated correctly, it's supposed to keep you heading in that wrong direction when you hit auto (for example, your compass points to 300 and you press auto, and it will continue to move at what you think is 300, even if you're really facing 250 ). We typically see this erratic behavior when you move something close to the flow gate compass after turning on the pilot, not just by pressing auto.
Rudder feedback can be misaligned or malfunctioning if your boat has it. This would make the pilot think he was turning the wheel straight, when in fact he was turning to port. If you have a rudder indicator on the demo display, manually center the rudder and see what the gauge indicates.
"No data" typically appears in navigation mode when the marine autopilot expects the networked chart plotter to send it route information, but there is no route being sent to it. Is it possible that the autopilot accidentally switches to navigation mode? Intermittent problems like this are the most difficult to detect, as the entire system must be checked piece by piece to make sure there is power everywhere, data is passing through, and no pieces are broken. We hope these suggestions help us, and let us know if we can be of further assistance.
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