Technautic Autopilot ?

[witzgall]

Hi all;

Does anyone here have direct experience with these autopilots, or know somebody that has?

they are at Cyberscope Maintenance

Edit - I spelled the name wrong - they are Tecnautic, not Technautic.

[imagine2frolic]

What would you like to know? I have used one for nearly 9 years.......i2f

[witzgall]

Well, Everything. Mostly, how well does it perform, and how reliable has it been? It would be good to know what drive unit you use, as well.

I was excited to see that it uses canbus, until talking with Otto from the company. It is not compatible with N2k, but that just means more wiring for me, not really a deal breaker. His position is that because it has a "real" gyro, that it is superior to one without. His setup would actually use the heading sensor I already have, a h2183, to augment and skew the gyro. The Simrad, the other setup I am considering, would use the h2183 alone. I imagine it is better with the gyro, but how much? Will I notice the difference?

Do you have the controller they are currently selling? How easy, intuitive is it to use?

Chris

Originally Posted by imagine2frolic

What would you like to know? I have used one for nearly 9 years.......i2f

[imagine2frolic]

That is a wee bit too technical for me, but I can type this. I have found it to be very durable. The only problem we had was a lightning storm. We were in a field where about 15 boats took a hit. It melted the radio tower on the office.

Over the phone Otto diagnosed the problem. We sent it to him from Jax Fl., and within a week we had the unit back, and working fine. I am not good with electronics, but learning. Another time we could not configure the autopilot after non usage of a year. We called otto, and he again diagnosed it over the phone. He told us it had no power. I said everything is lit up, and functioning. I had a friend come over, and sure enough there was no power. The hot was disconnected, and re connected, and everything worked.

We have been in some slop going down wind, and flawlessly we were on track. You could hear the hydraulic working quickly back, and forth, and we were steady as can be on course.

Customer service with Otto is what we all hope for. When we had no power, and calling from St. Augustine on the ICW. He was in Europe on a mountain top snow skiing. I have personally put on about 17,000 miles on the boat. The first owner sailed out of Germany to the Caribbean for 3 1/2 years.

Otto seems to be a straight up guy, and no B.S. I especially like the pod in the nav station where I can change it to any function to get any information while looking at charts..........i2f