Garmin gWnd Wireless Wind Instrument -- Range Matters!

My boat was made in 1974 and does not have conduit inside the mast to contain wiring.  That slap-rattle-bang song it likes to play at anchorages is bad enough, the last thing I want to add is another instrument!  (I know there are other concerns with such wiring, that are arguably more important than my freakishly low tolerance for odd noises... still though!)  Suffice to say I have a strong preference for solar powered wireless things to go up there.

The Garmin instrument is beautiful, consistent with their other offerings.  I have their chart plotter, RADAR, SONAR and autopilot as well, so expectedly, gWnd integrated with everything else effortlessly.

The stated range of gWnd's RF comms is 50'.  My masthead is 54' above the water.  It's a little hard to measure precisely, but I figured the spot on my bulkhead just below the cabin top had to be an inch or two more than 4' above water, right?  Well, maybe that old boat thick fiberglass played a role, but it wasn't reliable enough, signal drops were annoying.

So the nav box on my binnacle is about the same level, but only 3/4" wood to go through, instead of 2" glass.  It does work better there, until someone stands in the companionway for a bit, placing their body in the beam... apparently 50' is not approximate!

I thought about moving the sender to the top spreader, but aside from the wind shadow of the mast, too afraid the head sail would tend to slap it around when tacking or luffing.

There are other wireless wind instruments with better ranges -- in fact, I own one of them, but am waiting for it to come back from warranty repair... still.  (I bought the Garmin because I was tired of waiting.  If that situation doesn't resolve soon, it will be the topic of another post.)

The biggest thing I use it for, other than it's informational value, is helping the autopilot steer head to when raising sails -- that is an absolute godsend!  I have lazy jacks, the battens tend to get snagged in the LJ lines when raising the main -- except when capt roboto has his wind eyes on!  For single/short-handing, it is The Shit!  

Sadly it's random signal drops make it poorly suited for apparent wind heading hold -- it's not a catastrophe (it reverts to heading hold mode) just kind of a pain.  I had hoped for just a bit more.

So in conclusion, the gWnd is nice, price point (~$1000) is reasonable, installation was easy... love it when it works!  Wish there was a bit more wiggle room in its range.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Automating Bank Selection With Blue Sea 7701

Image
Before I start I want to mention that yes, I am aware of Blue Sea's ACR products.  Installing involves a fair bit of rewiring on my older boat, and I was more comfortable with something that was more like the traditional Perko rotating bank selection scheme (to the point they can exist in parallel, leaving the Perko as a backup.)   Rewiring to isolate the start circuit from the rest probably has some advantages... maybe next project.  The same isolation is not precluded by the scheme I went with, though automating it either way requires a little bit more... that was part of my plan anyway. Another objection, the ACR is activated by sensing voltage drop on the house bank, which means the starter load is drawn from the house bank, if only for a split second. I don't see the point of using an indirect signal like that, when a very direct one is readily available: the start wire of the key switch. As the title suggests the heart of this plan is the Blue Sea ML Series 77...
Read more

Battery Tie-Down Kit Degraded By Electrolyte

Image
I recently installed a Victron SmartShunt, and a pair of Blue Sea 7701 power relays, to take over the function of the Perko rotating battery bank selector.  (I wired them in parallel, leaving the Perko as a backup.) As one might well imagine, to accomplish this I had to remove one of the batteries in my house bank... which led to an alarming discovery, which in turn led to a rather shocking discovery.  Alarmingly, my charger voltage was set too high (left by the previous owner) it was boiling electrolyte out of my batteries.  This was, of course, easily corrected. Shockingly, I found that the electrolyte/acid had dissolved the plastic pad eyes that were supposed to be securing my batteries to the boat!  More, while the straps were impervious to the acid, the stitching holding its loops together, was not.  The strap material wicked the acid up and the stitches disappeared, so even if the pad eyes had been intact, the straps would've pulled right out. Effectively ...
Read more