WA
265 posts
I have a Raymarine Autopilot with the ST6002 control head.
The control head is mounted on the steering pedestal. I have two problems.
1. Occasionally the auto pilot will drop out of auto into standby and the boat rounds up into the breeze. Not pleasant at 2 o’clock in the morning. After much googling the only reason I can find is low battery voltage I did some checks and discounted the voltage issue.
I had to remove my compass from the pedestal to do some work on the compass light and it was out for a couple of days while sailing. The auto pilot behaved for two days while the compass was out of the pedestal. Do you think the compass could affect the autopilot?
2. The auto pilot is integrated with a C120 plotter and the plotter indicates no pilot thus I cannot set the auto pilot to Track.
Any Ideas would be appreciated
WA
855 posts
Hi Phil,
We had the same problem on our delivery and never really discovered the exact cause. Low voltage will sound an alarm on the control head and display a message. We thought maybe a voltage spike Or an issue with the fluxgate compass could be causing the dropouts.
also check all the control arm ball joints for free movement. back in Perth, we tore the autopilot motor mount off the bulkhead whilst manually steering from the ball joints seizing up. The mount was only lightly glassed to the bulkhead and not very strong. Following this, we think maybe sticky ball joints causing too much load for the motor could cause the dropouts. Since lubricating all the ball joints and remounting the motor with L brackets, it's been all good but we've not used the autopilot for more than 3-4hrs at a time.
