Garmin Reactor 40 Hydraulic Issues

[joshkaj1991]

Hey All!

New to Classic Parker and hopefully going to be a new owner of a beautiful 2015 Parker 2320 soon! Will be running out of SoCal and am excited for the new prospect; however, we took the boat for a sea trial today and tested the autopilot (which is a Garmin Reactor 40 w/ 1L hydraulic pump) and it had a weird issue that I was hoping you guys could help out with. First off, we were in the Puget Sound in water calmer than any lake you could imagine and we set a waypoint to have the autopilot track to and it would slowly correct to the port then snap back to the starboard and continually do that until we eventually reached the waypoint (we did reach the waypoint). It should be noted that the autopilot seemed to track okay when it was set on a random course (compass heading) and only seemed to do this when tracking to a waypoint.

On another (maybe unrelated) note, when manually steering, the boat is harder to steer to the port than it is to the starboard.

Any thoughts? I doubt it has to do with the autopilot pump size, but is that pump big enough for a 300hp Yamaha tied in to a 9.9hp kicker?

Thanks

 

[A-K]

As far as the manually steering issue. That is typical when the kicker is tied to the main. Mine is rigged the same way.

I can't offer any feed back on the AP.

Good luck.

Did you get the boat?

 

[joshkaj1991]

Thanks, A-K

The issue of being more difficult to port than starboard isn't that big of a deal to me but was just curious if others have experienced it too.

I will try giving Garmin a call and see if there is anything they can suggest.

I have agreed with the seller and are going to be moving forward with the sale, title transfer, then working with a shipping company to have it shipped from near Seattle, WA to Los Angeles, CA.

I am very excited!

 

[A-K]

Thanks, A-K

The issue of being more difficult to port than starboard isn't that big of a deal to me but was just curious if others have experienced it too.

I will try giving Garmin a call and see if there is anything they can suggest.

I have agreed with the seller and are going to be moving forward with the sale, title transfer, then working with a shipping company to have it shipped from near Seattle, WA to Los Angeles, CA.

I am very excited!

I pretty sure I know the boat you are buying.

It was babied by the original owner. He took perfect care of it.

Congrats!

 

[pelagic2530]

I installed a similar package on a customer’s boat recently. During setup, we experienced some of the same issues. I’m betting that it’s a settings issue. With a single engine, the boat will want to steer harder in one direction than the other, and that can lead to the snap steering effect you noticed. The Garmin has a setting called “acceleration limiter” that basically dampens the rate of turn that the AP will allow. This will compensate for that to a degree. If you’re getting a weaving effect around the track line, more than likely you’ll need to play with your gain and counter gain settings. Gain determines how tightly the AP holds a heading/how much rudder it will use to hold; counter gain is how much rudder it will use to stop swinging or correct for oversteering.

Additionally, if this is happening more on navigation to a waypoint than simply on a heading hold, you may need to recalibrate the compass. If the headings provided to the system are off, the heading sensor and the GPS can end up fighting each other. The GPS will call for a heading on which to steer; the heading sensor will provide what it thinks is the right heading to the AP; after awhile the GPS will sense that the boat is off course and order another heading change to correct for it, which will still be off… you basically start chasing your tail around a course line.

Every boat is a bit different and the settings will vary, so it’s worth it to start from scratch on a new boat, freshly calibrate everything, and adjust your settings until you find the performance that works for you.

 

[joshkaj1991]

I pretty sure I know the boat you are buying.

It was babied by the original owner. He took perfect care of it.

Congrats!

Thanks! That would be good news, and this owner took very good care of it as well. It's a beautiful boat.

The link to the boat on Bloodydecks:

https://www.bdoutdoors.com/forums/classifieds/2015-parker-2320sl-100-000.22714/
We are very excited to get it down here and get fishing once things open up.

 

[joshkaj1991]

I installed a similar package on a customer’s boat recently. During setup, we experienced some of the same issues. I’m betting that it’s a settings issue. With a single engine, the boat will want to steer harder in one direction than the other, and that can lead to the snap steering effect you noticed. The Garmin has a setting called “acceleration limiter” that basically dampens the rate of turn that the AP will allow. This will compensate for that to a degree. If you’re getting a weaving effect around the track line, more than likely you’ll need to play with your gain and counter gain settings. Gain determines how tightly the AP holds a heading/how much rudder it will use to hold; counter gain is how much rudder it will use to stop swinging or correct for oversteering.

Additionally, if this is happening more on navigation to a waypoint than simply on a heading hold, you may need to recalibrate the compass. If the headings provided to the system are off, the heading sensor and the GPS can end up fighting each other. The GPS will call for a heading on which to steer; the heading sensor will provide what it thinks is the right heading to the AP; after awhile the GPS will sense that the boat is off course and order another heading change to correct for it, which will still be off… you basically start chasing your tail around a course line.

Every boat is a bit different and the settings will vary, so it’s worth it to start from scratch on a new boat, freshly calibrate everything, and adjust your settings until you find the performance that works for you.

I think you're right on the GPS and compass fighting each other. As I said, it tends to slowlyy pull left and recorrect quickly to the right and that would make sense with what you said. I will try to recalibrate the AP when it gets down here. I will also look into the "acceleration limiter" setting you discussed.

Thanks for the detailed reply!