I sent Cursemaster a series of emails and
phone calls about the behaviour of my autopilot.
Essentially, they didn't believe me.
So I took some video, and sent them. Here's a couple:
Sailing to a
wind angle, AP thinks its sailing at 7' apparent, its more like 30'. Also, when you try to change the angle, it ignores the button presses.
https://youtu.be/ZdslfJBpu-E
Off course, alarming, but not moving the rudders:
https://youtu.be/4oNPIg0xcn4
Alarming "Off course" when it's actually not off course (well, less than usual).:
https://youtu.be/4Nt3pnUKhB4
These difficulties weren't a one-off. There were three of us who bought and fitted these pilots around the same time. We all had problems, one was actually worse than mine, the AP just switching itself to standby with no notification.
Some of the conversations with Cursemaster actually beggared belief. One where they seemed to not know the difference between true and apparent wind, for instance .
But the best was a friend who was asked what
software version displayed on the
screen on startup. It's 3 numbers, and he told them,
"abc".
"No, thats not right, it should be xyz"
"Well it shows abc"
"It can't be abc, it's xyz"
"Mate, I can read 3 numbers, it says abc."
"Are you sure it doesn't say xyz, it really shouldn't
be abc"
And so on...
The amazing thing is they told each one of us that we were the only one having problems. And yet one day Alan Lucas came aboard, and the first thing he said was "Oh no, a Cursemaster! We had one of them, threw it in the bin!".
I could go on.....