Navico radar plugin v3.0 released

[merrimac]

Originally Posted by SY Salamansa

For instance when bearing alignement of the radar (set to -3°) is good for a 90°T route it will be completly wrong for a 270T route (about 7-8° offset, whitch match with the actual magnetic declinaison, but do not know it is a coincidence)

...

Heading come from the raymarine EV1 sensor installed for a while onboard without issue.

That is to be expected with a magnetic compass (which your EV1 is). To fix this, your compass needs to be compensated. Most fluxgate compensation algorithms are not 100% able to do this.

I moved my Navico P9 compass to many locations and swung it repeatedly. I never got the error over 360 degrees below 5 degrees. Aluminium boat but with loads of heavy steel/copper wires and hydraulics and moveable lead.

In the end, for me, the solution was to move to a GPS compass that produces "true true heading".

[merrimac]

I can recommend the Furuno SCX20, this is by far the best GPS compass currently on the market: it has 4 GPS compass receivers and it calculates all 6 possible difference vectors, it is uncannily good. I even use it for my auto-pilot.

[SY Salamansa]

Thank you for your awnsers

But what I do not understand is that I get the issue even when COG is used as heading for the radar plugin.

[Hakan]

COG instead of heading is for test purposes. It can possible work while moving on a steady course on a flat sea without leeway or current.
As merrimac say's I think you need to deviate/calibrate your magnetic compass. Or get a satellite one. (I know they are not cheap)

[Corsair63]

Originally Posted by SY Salamansa

Hello
...
For instance when bearing alignement of the radar (set to -3°) is good for a 90°T route it will be completly wrong for a 270T route (about 7-8° offset, whitch match with the actual magnetic declinaison, but do not know it is a coincidence)

I have tried different setup on the plugin's parameters, using the heading from the radar, the true heading and the Mag heading + correction, even with the COG without success

Heading come from the raymarine EV1 sensor installed for a while onboard without issue.
....

what you're describing uses to be a compass not being adjusted because of the time, different geographic magnetic location or improper adjustment.

first of all "try" to have the sensor clear of any magnetic anomaly, if surrounded by another magnetic devices, e.g. radios, AIS, RADAR, etc. keep all then in same position.

all these equipment use to have a "auto-callibration" procedure to carry out while sailing, so, RTFM, follow the steps of the manual and proceed according to it at the end they use to display the final error to be adjusted in hardware/software.

after that, also while sailing too, install plugin "Deviation" and record the compass deviation at various courses to check what is the real course error at different courses.

it would be difficult to have and error of 0 degrees but at least you'll know an "average" error to input in the RADAR plugin.

if you have been laying berthed for long period either made metal repairs on board or told before done voyages, where you have gone too far from your base port or every at least 2 or 3 years, it's recommended to make a "self-callibration" of electronic compasses.

in case of traditional compasses, you can extend the time to 5 years but in the same cases you must perform a compass adjustment by official compass adjuster in case that our compass could be "corrected", most of ours couldn't be because they have not "correctors", so at least you could check the adjustment with "deviation" plugin and know the error.

it's said that: "know error is not an error". (Error conocido, no es un error)

(I'm not native English speaker, so sure that would be another proper English saying for the meaning of my sentence)

[Hakan]

More about deviation can be found for example here:
https://forum.raymarine.com/showthread.php?tid=99

[SY Salamansa]

Thanks every one for all these usefull answers.


I fully agree with the fact that a known error is not an error. So for now I am taking an average of the offset whitch I use as bearing alignement in the Radar plugin. This way the radar is well useable.


I haven't made anychange on my installation since I left France in more than a year ago and everything was working well so far. Even in place like West Indes were the MAG deviation is huge. Now I'am in Chile around 40°S where the deviation is also quite big. So a new calibration is a good idea.


I'am already using the Deviation plugin and I have tried the radar with HDT and HDG+deviation added by openCPN with the same résult.


Cheers
Guillaume