Raymarine Question

raybo3

I have a Raymarine Chart plotter. Its an RL80C my question is when I set up chart orientation I can set up "North Up" "Course Up" but I can not set up "Head Up". Does anyone know why? I do not use my plotter very much but I thought this was strange.....

LaRea

To use the head-up feature, you need to have a heading sensor installed on the boat.  

A heading sensor is a digital compass that measures the direction the bow is pointed ("head up").  If there's no heading sensor, and the boat is moving, the chartplotter uses the GPS course-over-ground to estimate heading ("course up").  

When underway at normal cruise speeds, you won't see much difference between course-up and head-up.  At slow or zero speed, there can be a big difference.  For example, if you are anchored and you turn on the radar overlay, it can be way off because GPS can't accurately estimate your heading.

raybo3

Wow LaRea thanks for that insight. Do you have the sensor? Is it hard to install?

LaRea

I recently installed a Raymarine EV-1 heading sensor as part of an autopilot kit.  It's easy.  If you already have a SeaTalk-NG network on the boat, adding the sensor is literally plug-and-play.  Unfortunately, the EV-1 and all other heading sensors are expensive ($600 and up).  

By the way, I'm doing a major helm upgrade that includes the autopilot plus a bunch of other goodies.  I'll post details when it's done, hopefully in a week or two.  In the process, I have learned a lot about Raymarine networking.  My boat actually has five networks all working together: SeaTalk, SeaTalk-NG, NMEA-0183, NMEA-2000 and SmartCraft.  Stay tuned for details!

raybo3

Thanks for the info. I found something on Ebay that might work for about a $150. It really is no big deal I do not need it but I like having everything work on my boat.....LOL