Wind instruments improve your chances to gain by tacking Tacking is complicated to do correctly, and there is a chance to gain from it. Wind instruments can improve your chance of success by helping you decide how likely you will gain. There are two kinds of tacks;
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Polars and target speeds tell you how fast you should be going Ever hear someone talking about hitting their targets at the post-race party, and wonder why they were shooting at people? They’re not trying to shoot the competition, they’re just using polars and target speeds of
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Here’s a term that is bandied about in measuring Wind Direction, but is commonly misunderstood: upwash. Many people think they understand what it is, but are wrong by 90 degrees. What do I mean by that? Most people hear the term upwash and take it for face
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Twelve Meter Yachts and their Sailing Instruments All through the 1980’s the America’s Cup was contested in Twelve Meter Yachts, and significant advances were being made in hull construction, sailcloth and panel layout, and in Sailing Instruments Systems. But, perhaps more than the others advances, Sailing Instruments were
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Understanding wind shear and gradient Wind shear… it’s that mysterious quality of the wind that can make or break your strategy in a race. Many people measuring wind refuse to believe in the existence of wind shear, never mind its effects on sail trim. Much has been
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Calibration makes your instruments more accurate and useful Sailing instrument calibration systems is necessary to make displayed information correct and useful. Instrument systems use sensors to measure primary environmental factors (boatspeed, wind, heading, position, heel and others), possibly combine them, and display the results. Calibrations adjust for
Learn more →Troubleshooting T1 Status There are many informational items that have a slow rate of change – the date for instance. The T1 status outputs these items round-robin on tag ” “. The format is id<colon>value. Axx: Current value of the Averages (A00=boatspeed,…). BU: Percentage of Ockam Bus
Learn more →System Configuration The functions the system outputs depends mostly on what interfaces are online. If no boatspeed sensor is attached, there will be no boatspeed output. Many functions depend on combinations of inputs. For example, it takes boatspeed and apparent wind inputs to produce true wind angle.
Learn more →Error codes are more than that: they also include advisories, e.g. Error 27, “Using SOG for boatspeed.” All current codes ore output to TEST Errors (tag “z”), each in turn. Some codes are deteced during power-up (noted in RED). Since they are only detected once, they remain
Learn more →Troubleshooting your system Pick one of the following troubleshooting pages depending on what you are looking to fix. If you are unfamiliar with your system, see Forensic Troubleshooting. If nothing is working, e.g. no lights or displays, see Power Troubleshooting. Processor seems to be OK, but displays
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