Autopilot with gyro or not!

[alastair]

The performance without a Rate Gyro has been fine for me, but I havent really been out in anything over a F4 recently - wife and kids wont let me!! When I have a charter, I avoid the bad weather too, and offer a money back deal if its too rough on the day. Were going to France and the CIs on hols this Summer, so maybe catch the rough stuff then [img]/forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]

Alastair
http://www.javacharter.co.uk

[nicho]

I had one without on a previous S37, and didn't have any problems, though in a biggish following sea at planing speeds, it would get cought out from time to time. I'm just having one fitted to my current boat (another S37), and decided to once again save the £600, and not have the rate gyro. I think it is fine for most, and as other have said, you can always retro fit..

[Gludy]

I would go for the G series with the built in gyro - this is used also for marpa and getting accurate heading information into the rest of the system. All you need is the standard cheap fast fluxgate attached to nmea2 on the autopilot. So in addition to much improved autopilot in any sort of seas, you get accruate heading info for other purposes.

[Oldhand]

For what its worth to you:

My sailing boat steered what I thought to be very poorly, both under engine and sail when my autopilot heading input was a standard fluxgate compass. I changed the compass to a "rate gyro" enhaced fluxgate unit from the same manufacturer and the autopilot steering control was transformed. I would thus conclude speed is not necessarily the deciding factor on whether to have "rate gyro" enhancement, it is as much to do with the boat handling characteristics. Of course the other advantage is that "rate gyro" enhanced high speed NMEA heading output makes radar ARPA functionality useable.