T&T: Auto pilot "hunting"

[Jeffrey Siegel]

> ...When I put it in Auto  mode it begins to "hunt"...

I had the exact same thing happen to me when we first got our DeFever
(with Raymarine electronics).  I messed around with calibrating the
system (turning slowly in circles) so much that we had people calling us
on the VHF asking if everything was OK.  I probably did the calibration
30 times - with no change.

Then one day it started working perfectly.  And it worked like that for
a couple of weeks.  Then it stopped working again.  It was very
frustrating.

Electronics doesn't usually work that way so we examined our behavior
closely to figure out what we were doing differently.  After weeks of
experimenting we found that - and I'm not kidding - if my wife's laptop
was behind the second chair in our salon, the autopilot would hunt.  Now
to find out why...

The reason turned out to be very simple.  The electronic compass
transducer was placed "smartly" away from all electronics in the helm
and mounted on the back of the sliding drawers cabinet in the galley.
When my wife put her laptop behind the chair, it was right up against
the cabinet where the transducer was located.

We now know to never put anything of substance behind that cabinet and
haven't had another problem in 5 years.


==================================
Jeffrey Siegel
M/V aCappella
DeFever 53PH
W1ACA/WDB4350
Castine, Maine

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