Nmea 0183 Wind instrument, what are your experiences with budget instruments?

[Franziska]

Hi,

I am considering to buy a wind instrument.

As it will be surely not top of the range, I wonder what your looking experience is with low to medium priced systems.

It will be either NASA Clipper, NASA Cruiser, Advansea or Raymarine St 40 or i40. I hope I did not miss an other hot contender here.

B&G, Raymarine ST60 or the like are not an option, as they are to expensive.
Tacktick would have been great but is to pricey.

NMEA 0183 is a must, want to interface with PC (no need for Apple interfacing) and ST4000 pilot.

I do not want to upgrade other stuff to NMEA 2000.

I am especially interested in longevity and the option to get replacement parts if necessary.

I looked for decent tests already but did not find one for these older/budget systems.

Would be awesome if someone could share their experiences.

Many thanks!

Franziska

ladyrover.jimdo.com





Would love

[44'cruisingcat]

A cat can give your masthead unit a real hard time. I don't have any experience with the wind instruments you're looking at, but I'd suggest you physically inspect all of them with a view to how ruggedly constructed they are. I've had my ST 60 fall off the mast once, and had to reinforce the base part with fibreglass.


If they all seem equally rugged (or fragile), I'd probably go with the Raymarine unit, it will interface better with the Raymarine A/P, you'd think.

[travellerw]

I have my eye on the Advansea due to thier price. All up with masthead device its like $650cdn. Pretty tough to beat that.

They are much more popular in Europe and Austrailia and I found some posts on some European forums about them. People seemed to be pretty happy for the price.

[UNCIVILIZED]

What kind of wand length are these units using, & how good are they when it comes to upwash calibration (accuracy & complexity of)? Especially over the range of various headsails, & wind speeds, given the rapid apparent wind shifts on boats which accelerate quickly.


I ask, as if they don't handle this well, then I'd think that there might be AP issues... with it not getting accurate, real time data, so that it can drive well.

[bstreep]

We have the Garmin wireless to the top of the mast product, formerly by Nexus. Gotta say, we love it, and it's hard to beat the price.

[Franziska]

Hi thanks for the responses so far.

Looked up the Garmin, way over 1000GBP is not really budget to me.

Anything around 300-500Euro is the price range under consideration here.

Interesting thoughts on sensor qualities. Physically I could beef the "wand" up with some carbon strands and Epoxy.
Upwash is less concern to me personally, my boat is more a Land Rover than a Porsche 😀

[UNCIVILIZED]

My comment about wand length is in reference to getting the masthead sensors far enough away from the sails' influencing their readings, so that you get "clean" (accurate) wind data.

Wands which are short, both vertically & horizontally, put the sensors more inside of the zone of disturbed wind which comes off of the top ends of the sails & mast. Making it a lot tougher (if at all possible) to get proper readings wind wise.
Although, bottom line, as long as the readings are consistent for various conditions, you should be okay.

[multihullsailor6]

Franziska,

I have the Nasa Clipper Wind range on my cat. They were installed in 2008 and worked fine until last year when the wind instrument didn't read the wind speed correctly any more. A new masthead unit cured the problem. I love the Nasa indicator desdign for easy readability.

[Franziska]

Hi Multi,

was it a mechanical failure of the sensor?
Just out of curiosity...

Thanks for your thoughts.

Franziska

Sent from my C6603 using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

[Suijin]

I don't know of any wind transducers where you can buy spare parts. Maybe you can get the cups/propeller in some cases but usually when the things break, it's time to replace them.

Do be aware that integrating mast head wind instruments from one manufacturer with the server/display of another can lead to issues, even when NMEA 183 compliant. It just happens in some cases, so if you can find a successful marriage with the deck-level part of the system I'd be strongly inclined to follow suit. It's an issue of being penny-wise and pound foolish.

[John Boor]

check out url=http://www.sailtimerwind.com This is a self powered mast head unit (solar powered) wind instrument. It will work with phone apps and with the nema adapter to a laptop.

John

[Matt Johnson]

Autonnic makes a nmea0183 wind transducer for around 190 GBP with a carbon fiber mounting poll. I haven't used one yet, but I'm going to try their nmea2000 version out on our refit.

autonnic

Matt

[multihullsailor6]

Originally Posted by Franziska

Hi Multi,

was it a mechanical failure of the sensor?
Just out of curiosity...

Thanks for your thoughts.

Franziska

Sent from my C6603 using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

Hi Franziska,

Can"t really say - I'm in Malta and the postage to / from the UK didn't warrant a repair job!

So you're now also a cat woman ?

[ozsailer]

I purchased the NASA range of instruments when outfitting our old boat. Easy to use and install and never had an issue with them. Four years on and the boat has been sold. I keep in contact with the new owners and they love the instruments as well. If you only need the basic system then you can't go past NASA for price and reliability.


Greg and Sue
SV Sunshine

[Weyalan]

I installed NASA Clipper Wind instrument on our boat about 8 years ago. It was still working fine when I took it off the boat this year (to replace it with one that talks to the autopilot).