ST50 wind and knotmeter

[Larry W.]

Bill; The wind pointer on top of the mast was broken by a big bird and West Marine can't get a new one for me. Can you help? Also, why do none of my compasses, not the big Plastimo, not the one in the autopilot nor the GPS agree on a course. I could see five degree diffs, but 15 degrees? Also, I was told by a tech support guy in New Hampshire that the ST50 knotmeter had a known software bug and couldn't be calibrated in the auto mode. True?

 

[Bill Boudreau]

3 questions for the price of one

The part number for the replacement masthead unit is D168. I am not sure what you mean by "West Marine can not get one for you".As someone else in this forum replied, "if you have one watch you know what time it is, if you have two watches you will never be sure". This also applies for your compass. Unfortunately you are going to have to box each individual compass to find out which one is accurate. This is done by referencing your heading to a known transit or a range between two markers. You will want to swing the compasses throughout the entire compass rose, making note of the deviation at each heading. If you get through the linearization procedure for the autopilot, then our compass will typically not be inaccurate by more than a couple of degrees.I don't know of any problems with the ST50 Speed Automatic Calibration procedure. It is much easier to compute the STW/SOG multiplier and enter this in the Manual Speed Calibration mode. This is what I usually use to do it.