All—
Ok, I decided to try a different ultrasonic
wind sensor other than the Maretron WSO100, enjoyed by numerous other CF members.
The unit selected was the LCJ Capteurs CV7-WINDYPLUG, ordered from
Fugawi.com in
Canada. The
price was about $775 including CanadaPost XpressUSA
shipping to
Oregon. I was surprised that unit arrived in exactly 6 calendar days from the time I ordered, I figured it would take a bit longer.
The reasons for my choice were:
1. It’s small and weighs almost nothing
2. Comes with a bracket ready to go for masthead mounting
3. Uses good old RS-232 from the
sensor to the
mast base
4. Come with all the wire needed for the
mast
5. Windyplug provides NMEA2K interface … and (wait for it) a baromete.
Not sure I needed a barometer on the N2K bus... but I have one now.
I included pics of the box and unpacking, and
wiring it was really straight forward.
You just connect the 4 color coded wires to Windyplug 4 colored spring clips and you are ready for testing. AS you can see in the pics I have a table with all my
Raymarine and other NMEA2K stuff on it… and it’s a bit of
wiring mess right now. But I would rather have the mess now then trying to debug things 45 feet in the air.
I used a
Raymarine A68 to test the unit and it could have not been easier. I just adding selected the “Data sources” menu and clicked “wind” and picked the highlighted menu item (see pic). After that I just created a custom page in the A68 and added a
wind instrument and Bingo! … it just worked. If I blew on the unit, the graphic on the A68 would correct track the direction… and risking hyperventilation I managed to push the meter to 9Kts.
So if anyone is wondering if they LCJ Capteurs CV7 works with a Raymarine Lighthouse II Rev 17 MFD… it works just fine.