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3
Parameter Adjustment
The AP14 uses highly advanced steering soft-
ware, which constantly assesses how the boat is
being affected by the sea conditions. By adjust-
ing its own performance, the pilot is able to
maintain the most accurate course for these con-
ditions, just as a human pilot would. So in a
rough sea, the pilot is not overworked and bat-
tery drain is kept to a minimum.
3.1 Rudder Movement (Gain)
The AP14 will make corrections if it detects that
the boat is off course. How much rudder it
applies to correct this is set by the Gain (some-
times referred to as the rudder ratio).
• The Gain setting can be compared to driving
a motor vehicle - at high speeds, very little
helm movement is necessary to steer the vehi-
cle (LOW Gain).
When driving at slow
speeds, more helm movement is necessary
(HIGH Gain).
• Fig 3.1A shows when the Gain is too low: the
boat takes a long time to correct the heading.
• Fig 3.1B is ideal - errors are quickly corrected.
• Fig 3.1C the Gain is too high - the boat starts
to "S", or oscillate around the correct heading.
• Excessive Gain (Fig 3.1D) makes the boat
oscillate increasingly off course.
The Gain can be adjusted in all modes, without
interrupting the operation of the pilot.
Press Gain once. The display will show GAIN
on the bottom line, along with the Gain setting
(1-9). The default setting is 5, which should give
good course keeping in most situations.
To increase, press
(Fig 3.2). To decrease Gain,
press
.
• If no key is pressed within 5 seconds, the con-
troller will return to the main display and the
Gain currently entered will be set.
Page 10
Fig 3.1 - Effects of Gain setting
Fig 3.2 - Adjusting Gain setting
3.2 Seastate
In a rough sea, more heading errors will be
detected by the pilot as the heavy seas yaw the
boat back and forth. The pilot would normally
be overworked trying to correct every error,
causing unnecessary strain on the unit and
excessive drain on the batteries.
The AP14 monitors the course errors as it goes
and it allows a "dead band" within which the
boat can go off course without corrections being
made (Fig 3.3). This is automatically set and
updated by the pilot to give the best compro-
mise between course holding and battery con-
sumption, but can be set manually if wished.
The Seastate can be adjusted in all modes, with-
out interrupting the operation of the pilot.
Press Set (see section 2.5) until the display
shows SEA on the bottom line, along with the
Seastate setting (1-10º or "–" for the fully auto-
matic Seastate setting).
To increase the Seastate, press
. To decrease,
press
. To select auto Seastate, press
"–" appears in the display (Fig 3.4).
• If no key is pressed within 5 seconds, the con-
troller will return to the main display and the
Seastate currently entered will be set.
3.3 Autotrim
To compensate for changing conditions, a rud-
der bias (sometimes known as rudder trim) is
applied in order to steer a straight course. The
amount varies according to factors such as
wind strength, boat speed, and trim tab setting.
If this was not done then the boat would tend to
veer off course.
The AP14 monitors the average course error
and applies a bias to the rudder to compensate
until the optimum condition is reached (Fig
3.5). This bias is applied gradually to not upset
the normal performance of the pilot, so it may
take a minute or so to fully compensate after a
major course change.
Fig 3.3 - Seastate "deadband"
until
Fig 3.4 - Auto Seastate
WIND
TIDE
Autotrim
Fig 3.5 - Autotrim principle
&
applied
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